Chapter 40 new Year's gift

Almost at the same time as the main force landed, the second battalion of the first regiment disembarked from another beachhead and established a half-moon defensive position just south of Gloucester Point Airport. It also prevented the airfield defenders from escaping to the south. Serving as a defensive wedge, Lecky and his comrades sat and waited in solitude while other troops attacked, in a place not even radio waves could reach.On the fifth day after landing, they lost contact with the main force. During these five days, the Second Battalion only did one thing, which was to send people to conduct reconnaissance in the deep area every day.Leckie has an interesting analogy for this: the battalion lies in the jungle, and the scouts stretch out like the tentacles of an octopus.

One day, the patrol team of the Second Battalion found the body of a scout in the jungle to the north. He had been stabbed more than a dozen times, and the Japanese army apparently used it as a bayonet practice tool.He had a tattoo on his arm of an anchor and a globe, the symbol of the US Marine Corps, which the Japanese brutally cut off and stuffed into the mouth of the corpse. From the battalion commander to the soldiers of the Second Battalion, everyone was extremely angry.They quickly attacked the jungle to the north, first captured two Japanese officers, and shot them on the spot!Then a small group of Japanese soldiers was found lying on the ground sleeping, and they were annihilated on the spot!

With blood lessons learned, reconnaissance patrols have become more cautious.Under normal circumstances, individual scouts cannot go out and are replaced by patrols.The patrol team ranges from 10 people to as many as 50 people. The pioneers are at the front of the team. During the march, each team member must keep an eye on the six directions, listen to all directions, and be prepared for accidents at any time.At this speed it would take a day for the patrol to move a mile back and forth, and a little more work if there was a hill in the way. Lecky not only participated in the patrol team, but also showed the power of a land veteran in the jungle encounter: when he encountered four Japanese soldiers by accident, he shot over with a submachine gun in an instant, killing all four guys. It was turned over.

The Japanese army participating in the battle of "Coffin Point" was a hodgepodge of several small troops sent by Matsuda to the front for reinforcement. Behind the jungle, a half-moon defensive position of the Second Battalion was unexpectedly discovered. The Japanese are accustomed to follow the plan meticulously, but the discovery of the US military camp was not planned, so these unimaginative "strange little people" rushed out of the jungle to the core of the half-moon fortifications. That is to say, the highest highland rushed over. There are only more than 100 people in the "hodgepodge" Japanese army, but there are 1,200 in the US military, and they are all veterans of the Marine Corps who have experienced many battles and are well-equipped.

These guys must be out of their minds, Leckie said. Not all of the 1,200 marines participated in the battle. No more than 30 marines actually participated in the battle of "Coffin Point", because the Japanese army was heading for their position. At two o'clock in the night, the Japanese army began to attack.At this time Lecky was sitting in the tent of the command post of the camp, holding a grenade in his hand, and prepared to use this grenade to destroy all the documents in the command post once the Japanese soldiers broke in. As a veteran, Leckie was able to observe the movement of the battle even though he hadn't directly participated in the battle: there wasn't a single spent bullet falling on this slope, so it was clear that the Marines had the upper hand in the battle.

The Marines used mortars and machine guns to deal with the advancing Japanese troops.It was still raining heavily that night, but the sound of mortar shell explosions almost covered the roar of the storm, and the concentrated shooting of machine guns prevented the Japanese army from taking advantage of it. After dawn, more than 100 Japanese soldiers, except one officer and four soldiers were captured alive, the rest were killed, and only six American soldiers were killed. The corpses of Japanese soldiers were piled up on the hillside. When cleaning the battlefield, Lecky saw the "loot maniac" from Guadalcanal Island again.Holding a vise in one hand and a flashlight for dentists purchased in Melbourne in the other, this gentleman kept "treasure hunting" among the corpses.

An Australian who accompanied the army originally kept talking about how brave the Australian army was, and he looked down on the combat effectiveness of the US military.After watching the battle, he asked Lecky in a surprised tone: "How do you Yankees have the shooting skills like last night? Where did you learn it?" Lackey didn't speak.He sighed again: "You marines can really fight, almost as good as the Royal Australian Army." That's the highest compliment an Australian can give. At dawn on December 30, when Lecky and the others were cleaning the battlefield, the 1st and 5th Marine Regiments were rapidly advancing towards the airport.After a series of battles, they captured Gloucester Point Airfield by nightfall.

The airport has long been dilapidated, and what the marines saw there, apart from 27 rotten planes, were two runways that had been completely blown up.The Army Corps of Engineers immediately started repairing it. Rupertas, the commander of the First Marine Division, reported to his immediate boss Kruger by radio: "We are very happy to give you this airfield as a gift, but it is a little inappropriate." Kruger forwarded the telegram to MacArthur, and the old Mai, who was good at rhetoric, changed hands and turned Gloucester Point Airport into a "New Year's gift for the American people."

When the new year came, the 1st Marine Division won the victory at the cost of less than 300 deaths, and once again defended the reputation of "The Butcher of Guadalcanal Island".This was the last jungle battle fought by the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. Historians commented: "There is no insurmountable difficulty in front of the First Marine Division!"