The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [118]
Sitting in their sandpit, some of Bottcher and Odell’s men watched in the direction of the village. The others kept their eyes on the Government Station. Bottcher heard something suspicious out on the water. Then Jastrzembski caught sight of a Japanese barge trying to get reinforcements to Buna Village. Bottcher and the other machine gunner were behind their machine guns, and as soon as they spotted the silhouette of the lead boat, tracers cut through the darkness. The barrels of their machine guns grew so hot that DiMaggio poured water from his canteen over them. Suddenly, an explosion rocked DiMaggio. Then he saw the barge go up in a shock of flames. Japanese soldiers dove overboard. Swinging his machine gun back and forth, Bottcher hit them as they swam for shore. Jastrzembski saw the bodies, illuminated by the glowing phosphorescence, roll in on breakers. The following morning, as the sun radiated through great clouds that had spilled rain on the north coast for the entire night, Jastrzembski saw that the waves had deposited the corpses onto the beach like driftwood.
That morning, Jim Boice hoped to capitalize on Bottcher’s breakthrough. With the help of two well-used flamethrowers that had just come in by lugger, and with Bottcher on the beach preventing Japanese reinforcements from reaching Buna Village, he hoped to overwhelm the bunker that had stymied the battalion’s advance for weeks.
The flamethrower’s operator advanced on the bunker. Twenty men covered him. He got within thirty feet of the Japanese position, stepped into a clearing, and turned on the weapon. The flame singed his eyebrows and sputtered. It lit the field on fire but fell well short of the Japanese. Then the Japanese opened up on the operator and three of the cover men, killing them instantly.
The weapon that Boice hoped would end the stalemate at the front was defective. Once again, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion would have to resort to direct assaults on Japanese positions, a primitive tactic that guaranteed the battalion would lose more good men.
By December 8, 1942, Japan’s hold on the north coast of the Papuan Peninsula was slipping. The jubilation that had followed the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of Japan’s “Great East Asia War” one year before had turned to despair.
On December 8, First Lieutenant Jitsutaro Kamio wrote in his diary: “Today is finally the one year anniversary. We should have a ceremony but everyone is exhausted.”
Although Allied ground forces had registered few significant gains, with the opening of new airfields at Dobodura and Popondetta, General Kenney’s pilots stepped up the pressure on the Japanese, slowly tightening the noose, making it almost impossible for ships to deliver troops, food, medicine, or ammunition.
Kuba Satonao, a first-class mechanic in a naval transport unit, wrote that because of the shortage of ammunition, officers had instructed soldiers to “make every bullet count.”
The Allied supply situation, on the other hand, had vastly improved. Supplies that Harding had requisitioned weeks before being dismissed began to arrive. Engineers had just completed the Dobodura-Siremi jeep track and a number of other important supply tracks. New coastal luggers to replace those that had been destroyed in mid-November had just arrived at Oro Bay. The Americans now had mortars and large artillery and enough ammunition, including delayed-action mortar shells, to do real damage. They also had a new four-inch-to-one-mile Buna map, which forward artillery and air observers used to help operators of the big guns zero in on their targets.
As a consequence, the Americans hammered the coast. Kuba Satonao wrote, “All we do is get severely bombed. Buna is gradually falling into a state of danger.” A few days later, he wrote again, “now they are coming over at night. We lived till today, but it is something