Alone on Guadalcanal by Martin W. Clemens

Author:Martin W. Clemens [Martin, Clemens, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781612512037
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Up the Creek

The next day, I was watching the Kawanisis coming home as usual just after 1600, thinking that aerial reconnaissance must be a dull game, when my reverie was disturbed by one of my scouts, Selea, who arrived, out of breath, with a letter from Macfarlan. Selea was even more solemn than usual, for the news was not good. Mac was terse and grim: “We’re now at the Suta, and all buggered.” After an awful trek his party had withdrawn to the pass of the Suta River, as far as one could go before coming down on the far side from the hills. Before they left Gold Ridge a floatplane had roared over at one hundred feet, and the day after it had returned and dropped three bombs. “They were well on the job, the bastards,” Mac said. Most of the local carriers had fled; the party had got away, luckily, because of the timely arrival of my emergency squad, which I had reluctantly sent over to help. Hay was with Macfarlan, and I wondered how his 1916 leg was behaving. I was a little relieved to hear that the miners were there too. It had been one hell of a way to celebrate F. M. Campbell’s sixty-fourth birthday.

Now, Mac wrote, they were getting all their gear up there, to prepare for a dash to the weather coast and then off the island. Talisi Bay was the only decent all-weather anchorage on that side that was reasonably safe, and probably the only one that he could use for evacuation. I thought that Mac had postponed it when we got the news that five hundred Japs were making for the south coast; we were still anxiously awaiting news of them. After Rhoades’s scare it sounded very risky to move just then.

I really didn’t know what to do. The weather coast didn’t sound any safer than the northern coast, where the Japanese now had posts at Taivu and Berande as well as at Lunga, and patrolled all the areas regularly. I had never been round to the south coast and didn’t know its people, and they hardly knew me; yet, if Macfarlan was definitely going, I would be on my own. And then what? I don’t mind admitting that I was very much afraid, perhaps as much of making the wrong decision as of the enemy.

At 1000 on 12 July, two aircraft, one a Kawanisi, the other a reconnaissance plane with floats, attacked Gold Ridge again. They had been flying around all morning. I hoped Macfarlan hadn’t gone back to fetch anything, as two of the scouts said they could hear guns strafing. I sent someone off immediately to investigate. This was the third call at Gold Ridge. Who would be next?

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