The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [116]
In a letter he wrote to his wife that night, Eichelberger said that the December 5 battle “will always remain with me as long as I live.”
By the time he wrote to Sutherland later that evening, though, Eichelberger’s mood had bounced back. Bottcher’s breakthrough had redeemed an utter failure on both fronts. Eichelberger was now full of praise for the Red Arrow men. “The number of our troops,” he said, “that tried to avoid combat today could be numbered on your fingers.”
Grose, too, was moved to revise his opinion of Smith’s Ghost Mountain boys. “The battalion’s men,” he wrote in his diary, “have been courageous and willing, but they have been pushed almost beyond the limit of human endurance.”
At dawn on December 6, after a “terrific rainstorm” the Japanese assaulted “Bottcher’s Corner” from two directions. Expecting the raids, Bottcher had set up a machine gun the night before, and he and his small group repelled both attacks.
That night, according to Sam DiMaggio, the men “fixed their bayonets in preparation for hand-to-hand combat.” It was impossible to sleep. DiMaggio licked at the dried salt that had formed around his mouth and wondered about the turn his life had taken. He had left the Malleable Iron Company, vowing never to go back. Now here he was, a soldier fighting for his life.
Land crabs skittered along the beach, through the palm leaves and the delicate snailshells, birds whistled from the nearby trees, and waves slapped against the barges. Jastrzembski was holding himself together through sheer force of will. His senses deceived him. Everywhere he saw Japanese slithering through the sand. Every noise sounded to him like an enemy soldier poised to bayonet him in the belly. He could almost feel it, ripping through his body, tearing apart his insides.
At 4:00 a.m., the false dawn lapsed back into darkness. Jastrzembski studied the sky and the unfamiliar stars, and then his eyes grew heavy. All he wanted to do was sleep and then he smelled it: the jungle. In the past two months he had grown accustomed to it, but there it was again, the odor of rot and decay.
Two hours later, Japanese troops crept toward Bottcher’s Corner, but a forward scout, Corporal Harold Mitchell, caught a glimpse of them. Mitchell let out a yell and charged the Japanese with a fixed bayonet. The Japanese were so startled by the rush that they failed to attack. Bottcher grabbed one of the machine guns, and together with the other machine gunner and his riflemen raked the beach, the brush, and the small coconut grove. During the skirmish, Bottcher was hit in the hand by an enemy bullet, but one of his men wrapped it and Bottcher returned to the machine gun. Mitchell made it back to their position unscathed.
That afternoon, Company E, minus its longtime leader Lutjens, and Company G made another stab at taking the village. When the attack bogged down, Stutterin’ Smith came forward, moved out front with Gus Bailey, and led the charge. It was as dark as the sky before a summer storm and in no time the companies lost sight of each other. Smith groped his way forward through the airless jungle.
Smith had not gone more than twenty yards when the Japanese began a rhythmic chant. It was the first time he had ever heard it, the precursor to a banzai charge. He took cover behind a tree and waited just as a mortar landed over his head. Hot metal fragments rained down. Five of his men fell. Smith wondered how he had escaped getting hit and then he moved his hand across his neck and up and down his back. He felt blood, and the next thing he knew an aidman was running toward him to put a dressing on his wound. Smith protested that it was just a shallow flesh wound. But the aidman insisted on bandaging it anyway, and encouraged Smith to return to the aid station. The attack had stalled; otherwise Smith would never have agreed to go back.
Back at the aid station Smith ran into Captain Boet, the battalion surgeon with whom he had crossed the Owen Stanleys. Boet took a look at the wound.