Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [88]
At that point, another wave of Bettys arrived. They were promptly met by the Cactus Air Force’s fliers. “The sky was soon crisscrossed with dozens of white streaks, which seemed to persist for many minutes from high altitude to sea level,” a Monssen sailor, Chester C. Thomason, said. “Perhaps a dozen planes—friend and foe—were seen to plunge into the sea. The Monssen did not attempt to fire, as individual dogfights were too confusing.” Afterward, once the surviving aircraft had dropped their bombs and departed, a group of men, apparently Americans, appeared on an open grassy hillside about half a mile inland. They seemed to be surrounded. Mortar rounds were bursting among them. Evidently the landings that the Monssen had accompanied hadn’t managed to encircle and destroy the Japanese.
It was then that Smoot noticed a lone figure on another hill waving signal flags. His signal read: SEND BOAT ASHORE. The captain was wary of Japanese trickery. The figure was dressed in what he called “army drill,” but from this distance the man could belong to either side. “We didn’t know who it was and I wasn’t going to take any chances.” Smoot asked a signalman if there were a way to verify his identity. The signalman had an idea, and flagged a question to their mysterious correspondent: WHO WON THE WORLD SERIES IN 1941? The answer—YANKEES IN FIVE—decided the issue.
The deck force lowered a whaleboat over the side, and it motored in to the beach. When it returned, it was carrying the commander of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines, his aide, and two other marines. Coming aboard, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, age forty-four, saluted Smoot. “I doggone near lost my life getting down to the beach. I’ve got a whole group of my men up there in the hills. I’ve got to get them out of trouble.”
Puller told a grim story. His marines, landing at Point Cruz and attempting to join up with Colonel Merritt A. Edson’s 1st Raider Battalion, were in the midst of a faltering effort to dislodge Japanese forces from the Matanikau village area. When Puller’s battalion got ambushed and pinned down by the well-entrenched units of General Kawaguchi’s 17th Army, they were effectively cut off. By day’s end, two dozen men would be dead and that same number wounded. They needed evacuation. Puller arranged for a couple dozen Higgins boats to do the job. The Monssen would lend fire support. “They are trapped up there,” he told Smoot. “Let me tell you where to shoot.”
Puller conferred with the destroyer’s gunnery officer, and in short order the ship’s four five-inch guns were trained inland again and set to barking. “We just ploughed it with bullets, straight up and down the middle,” Smoot said. “Then we spread the firepower up two sides.” Several Higgins boats, crewed by volunteers, motored in under fire to evacuate the trapped marines.
Wielding her main battery like a long-armed plow, Smoot’s gunners blew open a path through the jungle. “As the first marines appeared on the beach,” Chet Thomason wrote, “heavy enemy rifle and machine gun fire commenced from both sides. After a few minutes, the landing boats retreated back alongside the Monssen.” Getting the men to the beach was much easier than retrieving them from it. When Puller thought that the boat crews hadn’t committed themselves fully to the evacuation, he was furious. He stepped on Smoot’s toes by yelling at the coxswains, telling them to drive back to the beach and not come back until all the survivors had been retrieved.
“Four marines had managed to scramble into one of the boats earlier,” Thomason said. “They were lying down exhausted in the bottom of the boat. When they realized that the boat was being sent back into