The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [131]
Deciding that one prong of the attack had to come from Musida Island, which separated Buna Village from the Government Station, Grose sent out five boats. Their objective was to engage the Japanese east of the island while engineers repaired the bridge that spanned the creek between the island and the Government Station.
The boats pushed off in the late afternoon. Disoriented, they went west instead of east, and American troops who were dug in on the sand spit northwest of the island figured they were enemy boats and opened up on them. A lieutenant from the lead boat, which sunk immediately, struggled to shore and managed to reach the spit without being killed by friendly fire.
The lieutenant shouted, “You’re firing on Americans!” By the time the troops realized what they were doing and stopped, all five vessels had been sunk. Luckily no one had been killed.
Back at the bridge, 3rd Battalion troops tried to reach the station. At the far end of the bridge, though, the new pilings collapsed and the soldiers fell into the creek. Eichelberger, according to Grose, “ranted and raved like a caged lion.” He had hoped to impress Sutherland. Sutherland, though, left Grose’s command post in disgust. He had not been on hand to see the dramatic seizure of the Government Station, but instead witnessed the Keystone Kops in action.
The following day, Eichelberger’s command was saved by a patrol’s discovery: Captain Yasuda’s men had evacuated the Triangle.
Later, on the same morning, the original Urbana Force—White Smith’s 2nd Battalion 128th, and the Ghost Mountain Battalion, minus Gus Bailey—was pulled out of reserve again and sent forward.
For Stenberg, being sent back into battle was a blow. At the battalion’s bivouac site, he had sweated out another fever, and his left ear was worthless. He wondered now if he could hear well enough to save his own life. Would he be able to hear a stick crack just before a Jap gashed open his belly, or the shifting of a sniper hiding in the crook of a tree? He had been lucky on December 19, and he knew it. Now, he was being sent back in two days before the end of the year.
Stenberg and what remained of the 126th’s 2nd Battalion took up a holding position at the southeast end of Government Gardens. White Smith’s men moved into the Triangle. While the two battalions were en route, a company of the 127th pushed past the Government Station and established a pivotal two-hundred-foot frontage along the beach just west of Giropa Point.
While the Americans had finally fixed their supply problems—two hundred tons of cargo were coming in via freighter and lugger—the Japanese garrisons were being bombed into oblivion. At Girua, at the head of the Sanananda truck, Kiyoshi Wada, a member of the signal unit, chronicled the garrison’s collapse.
On December 20, Wada wrote, “At this rate I’ll become a dried-up human being.” Three days later, he wrote again, “When we made our first attack I had no consideration for life or death…. However, nowadays, somehow I am full of the desire to go back home alive just once more.”
The day after Christmas, Wada again found time to write: “The area around our tent is a desolate field. At about 8 o’clock, Hagino [Wada is referring to Private Mitsuo Hagino of the 144th Infantry Regiment’s 3rd Battalion] next to me, was hit. Since so many patients came pouring in, the medical men are shorthanded and I was forced to stop the bleeding and bandage Hagino outside in the pitch dark.” On December 28, Wada wrote despairingly. “Went to get water from the stream. On the way the jungle was full of dead, killed by shrapnel. There is something awful about the smell of the dead…. Everyone has taken cover in the jungle, but since there is no one to carry Hagino and take care of him, I cannot leave him behind. I have decided to stay…. All officers, even though there is such a scarcity of food, eat relatively well. The condition is one in which the majority is starving. This is indeed a deplorable state of affairs for