Excerpt

When we arrived at the site of the battle near Asamana Village we moved through “C” Company’s lines to deploy along the edge of a coconut grove that abutted the expanse of kunai grass where “C” Company had been pinned down. In so doing we passed by the bodies of four of the dead raiders that were waiting for the battle to be over so they could be buried. Nearby were the “C” Company corpsmen attending to the wounded. I tried to keep my mind off those matters and on other things, which is how I came to notice that the Raider with the extra generous derrière who was attempting to burrow into the roots of the palm tree in the next row ahead of me was our battalion executive officer.

That got me to wondering what might happen to me if he should be so indiscrete as to get himself identified by the Japanese as the son of the President of the United States while he was anywhere in my general vicinity and I began thinking about ways of getting more distance between us. I was still burdened with the complexities of that issue when the order to advance in a flanking maneuver was passed along the line. As we moved out I saw that Captain Wild Bill, since the last time I had noticed, had added a Lewis machine gun slung from his shoulder as a supplement to his arsenal of two forty-five caliber Colt automatics.

Maintaining visual contact with the two raiders flanking me was more easily said than done in the kunai grass, which was so tall I couldn’t see either of them if they happened to step into a hole or crouch down a little. The moment we stepped out into the kunai both of them were lost from sight. I eventually came across a pathway someone else had made during “C” Company’s initial engagement earlier in the day and I followed that, hoping it would take me in the right direction. That is how I happened to stumble onto the trampled-down growth of kunai where Owen Barber, one of “C” Company’s brave young Raiders, had come to the end of his stay with us here on earth.

One quick glance told me all that I will ever need to know about the insanity of war or the misguided notions of the sick individuals who attempt to glorify it. The memory of Guadalcanal that will forever remain with me is the vile taste of vomit that filled my throat at the sight of the decapitated torso that confronted me in that clearing. If I live to be a hundred I won’t forget the revulsion I felt at that moment or the wave of anger that swept over me at the sight of the mutilated remains displayed with profane disregard for all that should be held decent within the brotherhood of man. The desecration of nature’s handiwork with such disregard for human values fills me with a terrible resolve to see every member of this evil Asiatic scourge swept completely off the face of the earth.

Our sweep through the Japanese bivouac area in the woods beyond the kunai yielded another twenty bodies of the enemy’s rear guard that died in the skirmish that accompanied our advance and which seems to have escaped the notice of Captain Peatross or to have ever been accounted for in his official diary of the action.” The omission is understandable because I don’t recall seeing Captain Peatross among those participating in the sweep and he was not kindly disposed toward Colonel Carlson, and frequently reminds us of that by discounting the results of certain actions attributable to other companies not his own.

To add to the Japanese misfortune, just as night was falling and we were regrouping at the end of our sweep, the Colonel called for an air strike and the powers that be sent two SBDs over that hit the retreating Japanese to cap off the day’s events. I believe by that time it could be safely said that “F” Company had given a pretty good account of itself. The company, exhausted by over thirty miles of forced march, dropped in its tracks that night right on the battlefield that had finally been won at the cost of the lives of five dedicated Raiders of “C” Company. “F” Company had come away from the action unscathed, having accounted for twenty of the enemy killed.

The following morning we made our way back to Asamana, and that evening returned once more to Binu to make that village our base for the next several days.