The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [83]
That evening, after rounding up the corpses, the soldiers of the 128th dug in. The medics, who had been shot at all day, removed their red crosses and arm brassards and began dyeing their white battle dressings green. Japanese snipers loved to zero in on the white bandages.
None of the men slept. It was raining, and they wrapped themselves in leaky raincoats or shelter halves. Their foxholes were filled with water. And their minds played tricks on them, too—vines became gun barrels, trees skulking Japanese soldiers. Dead buddies came back to life. Cicadas and crickets shouted obscenities.
The Japanese were on the move, too. Ray Bailey, a platoon sergeant with Company B, remembers stringing up triplines that night. He and two of his buddies—they called themselves the “Three Musketeers”—used C ration cans and grenades. They pulled the pins on grenades and then crammed the grenades into the cans, knowing they had only five seconds—One Mississippi, Two Mississippi—before the grenades splattered their guts all over the jungle. Once in the can, the grenade handles would not budge. If a Japanese creeping through the jungle hit the string they had tied to the handles, the grenade would come tumbling out of the can and trigger the detonator.
Bailey and his buddies thought that they would sleep easier after setting the triplines, but the Japanese had other ideas. “They had one of our guys,” Bailey says. “He was hollering. They were torturing him so we could hear and there was nothing we could do about it.” The day before, the Americans had brought in a Japanese prisoner. “We never felt any hate against him,” Bailey recalled. “But after that, everyone vowed they would never bring in another Jap prisoner.”
Back at his headquarters at Embogo, Harding was stunned by the 128th’s defeat. Allied Intelligence had seriously underestimated the number of enemy soldiers at the beachhead, maintaining that the Japanese army had only fifteen hundred “effectives,” when in actuality its troop strength numbered nearly 6,500 fighting men. To make matters worse, Harding was still reeling from the news he had received that afternoon: He would have to forfeit his 126th Infantry Regiment to General Vasey, who wanted it west of the Girua River on the Sanananda track, a move that had MacArthur’s blessing. While the 128th attacked from the east, up the coast, Harding had hoped to use the 126th as his left-flank force in a head-on advance on Buna Village and Buna Government Station. It was a classic double envelopment, intended to squeeze the Japanese out of their bunkers through overwhelming force. Now, only a day into the assault, he had lost a whole regiment to the Australians, and was forced to commit his reserve, the 128th Infantry’s 2nd Battalion. Still he would be short of men.
Colonel Clarence Tomlinson, the new commander of the 126th, was equally puzzled by the news that his regiment would be fighting with the Australians. He tried to reach Harding, but failed to make radio contact. Unwilling to move without confirmation, he radioed Port Moresby instead. Port Moresby informed him that the order was legitimate, and early on November 20 Tomlinson set out for Popondetta, accompanied by Captain Boice. Late that afternoon, Tomlinson and Boice reported to General Vasey. Vasey, in turn, sent Tomlinson and Boice and the entire 126th on to Soputa.
Late in the afternoon on November 20, after slopping through thick mud for more than half a day, the 126th arrived at Soputa and received their orders. They would have a day of rest and on November 22 they would be committed to battle. Though