The 4th Raider Battalion had formed at Camp Pendleton, California, on October 23, 1942, under the command of then Major James Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a veteran of the raid on Makin, where he had won the Navy Cross, was an extraordinary man. By any standard of medical measurement, Raider or otherwise, he could have been found physically unfit “to perform the duties of his rank at sea and ashore” and rejected for military service. Part of his stomach had been removed, and his vision was so poor that should he lose his glasses (which he did at Makin), he could not see well enough to find them. He had flat feet and wore tennis shoes most of the time until he finally got field shoes broken in. But his physical infirmities notwithstanding, he was a “plank owner” in the 2nd Raiders and, as Carlson’s executive officer, had unflinchingly gone through the difficult days of their organization and training, often per-forming on guts alone.

Bringing this same intensity of purpose to his new command, Roosevelt put his neophyte Raiders through three months’ of extremely rugged training at the Raider Training Center at Camp Pendleton to prepare them for overseas deployment. Upon completing this training, Roosevelt and his Raiders embarked on the USS President Polk and sailed for Espiritu Santo, arriving on February 26, 1943.

Unlike the 1st Raider Battalion, which had shipped out a year earlier with Model 1903 bolt-action rifles, with .30 caliber ammunition that occasionally failed to fire, with World War I bayonets, and with individual equipment obsolete for years, the 4th Raiders were equipped with the best our country produced. But not only was the 4th Raider Battalion well equipped: It also had exceptional enlisted and officer personnel. With great company com-manders like Snell, Luckel, Walker, and Flake and many other great officers and noncommissioned officers to lead the men, Roosevelt brought to Espiritu Santo the best trained Marines our Corps had produced. Then, after bringing them to peak performance for combat with two months of jungle training, Roosevelt succumbed to malaria and had to be evacuated, never to lead in battle the men he had worked so hard to train.

Although the 4th Raiders had not been tested in combat, at this time it well may have been the best battalion in the Raiders and perhaps in the entire U. S. Marine Corps. Any company commander in the battalion could have assumed command and performed admirably. The lucky man, however, was newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Currin of the 3d Raiders, a former enlisted man who, in 15 years’ service, had advanced from private to his present rank. Assuming command on May 4, Currin had less than a month to get to know his battalion. On May 31, he embarked with his new command on the USS John Penn for Guadalcanal, arriving on June 2 and debarking at Tetere, where the battalion went into camp to make final preparations for TOENAILS.

Admiral Turner’s selection of the 4th Raiders for the Kennedy rescue mission did not entail a major change in plans or reshuffling of the troop list. With the exception of Company “0” which originally was to land on Rendova, Currin’s battalion had been scheduled to hit Viru Harbor and Wickham Anchorage on June 30. Now the Viru Harbor operation would be advanced a few days and combined with the rescue mission.

For the Segi Point landing, Currin designated about half of Headquarters Company, and two rifle companies: First Lieutenant Ray Luckel’s Company “0” and Captain Anthony Walker’s Company “P.” The commanders of Companies “0” and “P” were among the very best. Lieutenant Luckel was intelligent, big, strong, and durable. Starting his Marine Corps career as a private, he had served in every rank in line to first lieutenant and had excelled in each. You could bet your life that every Raider in his company was expertly trained in all of the tools of the trade: pistol, rifle, machine gun, hand grenade, and bayonet; was highly disciplined and physically fit. You could also bet that a company of such Marines under such a commander would be durable and could hike forever and a day.

When the 4th Raiders first arrived at Espiritu Santo and were camped across the river from us 2nd Raiders, Ray often visited Lieutenant George Schrier, who graciously included me in these visits. Schrier undoubtedly was the best judge of character of all the Marines I had known, and when he said, “Luckel has what it takes!”, there could be no doubt that Luckel did, indeed, have what it took to lead his Raider company wherever it was called upon to go.

Another superstar was Captain Anthony Walker, “Tony” to his friends but “Cold Steel” to others because that often was his way, particularly in his approach to bayonet instruction. Tony was a Yale graduate, a football player, and an avid admirer of the Corps. Upon graduation from Yale, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, went through recruit training at Parris Island, and then on to sea duty. At this time, he was selected for officer candidates’ class and transferred to the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, where I first met him.

Tony and I were classmates in the 1st Officer Candidates’ Class and were commissioned together in February, 1941, but our ways parted after we completed officer training in June. He was one of five officers retained at Quantico as instructors in the candidate training system, and it was several months before he made his way to the 9th Marines and from there into the Raiders. Like Luckel, he was intelligent, big, strong, and durable, and you could also bet your life that his Company “P” was expertly trained in the tools of the trade and was tough, durable, and ready for anything that might come down the road.

But now the time had come for the ultimate test of the efficacy of any training program: combat. After dark on June 20, the Raiders embarked on APDs Dent and Waters and sailed immediately for Segi Point, arriving before dawn on the twenty-first. As the two APDs groped their way through the dark off Segi Point, they began to encounter coral heads and other hazards in these treacherous, uncharted waters. Fortunately for the ships and the Raiders, one of their own, Lieutenant Mal McCarthy, had been sent to New Georgia to reconnoiter Viru Harbor and Munda Airfield. After finishing his reconnaissance, he had remained behind to await the landing force.

Upon sighting the destroyer transports, Kennedy sent McCarthy and 14 natives out to meet them and guide them to the deepwater anchorage. As the natives paddled the canoe ever closer to the Dent, all sorts of wild thoughts went through McCarthy’s mind. He was the executive officer of Walker’s company and knew for certain that Tony’s Raiders would be on deck, their weapons in hand, unlocked and ready to fire. Any false move on his part would probably be curtains for him; thus, it was with indescribable relief that he heard Tony’s unmistakable voice challenge peremptorily, “Who goes there?”

Upon hearing McCarthy’s hastily shouted identification of himself, Tony shouted back, “What in hell are you doing here, Mal?”

Before McCarthy could even begin to reply, another voice, belonging to one of the ship’s officers, hailed him with: “Is that you Mal McCarthy?”

          When McCarthy assured this second interlocutor that he was, indeed, Mal McCarthy, he heard in reply:“This is Jim Grealish.”

          What a reunion! Grealish and McCarthy, both from San Francisco, had been classmates at the University of San Francisco.

          With the assistance of a local pilot and Kennedy’s signal fire on the beach, and in spite of a couple of bottom scrapes, the APDs made it through the reefs to the offloading point. At 0530 on the twenty-first, Walker’s and Luckel’s Raiders went over the sides of the APDs into Higgins boats and by 0600 were ashore. Currin immediately deployed his companies to defend against an enemy attack, but no Japanese appeared. By 1030, the Raiders’ supplies were all ashore, and the two APDs carefully felt their way out through the reefs and headed back to Guadalcanal.

          At 0600 on the twenty-second, Companies “A” and “D,” 103d Infantry, and an airfield survey party from Acorn 7 landed from the Crosby and Schley. Leading the survey party was an indomitable engineer, Commander Wilfred L. Painter, who often boasted of what he could do and more often than not did it. The master plan for the development of Segi Point called for the construction of an airfield as quickly as possible, and Painter had boasted that he could do the job in 10 days. Now he would have to put up or shut up.

          With the two Army companies deployed to defend Kennedy’s base and the airfield construction site, Currin could focus his full attention on preparations for the operation against Viru Harbor, which was supposed to be attacked at around 0700, June 30. Over the next several days Currin sent out patrols, guided and reinforced by Kennedy’s natives, to hunt down and destroy any Japanese in the area and to reconnoiter routes of approach to Viru Harbor. There was no contact with the enemy, but the patrols found plentiful evidence of his recent presence in the form of numerous footprints, discarded equipment, and blazes on trees. However, no easy routes of approach to Viru Harbor were found.

Although the objective was only 10 or so miles west of Segi Point as the crow flies, overland routes of approach were very circuitous, passing around the headwaters of unfordable streams, across fordable streams, and through dense jungle and mangrove swamps. As the natives well knew, the New Georgia hinterland was not a pleasant place, and the only good way to travel from one point on the coast to another was by canoe. Obviously, the ideal solution would be to get as close to Viru Harbor by boat as the enemy situation and the availability of suitable landing beaches would permit.

In the meantime, Currin had sent Captain Foster C. LaHue, the battalion personnel officer, by canoe to the Hele Islands to rendezvous with the USS Sch1ey and pick up the operation order of the Commander, Eastern Force (Rear Admiral George H. Fort) for the capture of Viru Harbor and Wickham Anchorage. After an overnight, 30-mile round trip, LaHue returned to Segi Point early in the morning of June 25.

Currin’s initial reaction to the operation order is not recorded; however. he at least must have felt dismay and surely twisted his mustache a lot, as he was wont to do when agitated. Admiral Fort’s order had been written on June 21, and any similarity between it and the existing situation at Viru Harbor was purely coincidental. In the first place, the order completely ignored the 4th Raider Battalion (-) as the responsible tactical command then located at Segi Point and assigned a mission on1y to Walker’s Company “P.” In the second place, it failed completely to consider the realities of the terrain and the recent reinforcement of the enemy garrison in the objective area.

Company “P’ was directed to proceed by rubber boat and canoe on June 28 to Nono (three air miles west of Segi Point), land, and advance overland to Teternara, arriving in time to attack at about 0700 on June 30 and capture the coastal defense guns reportedly sited there. As soon as the attack began, APDs Crosby and Kilty would sail into the harbor and land a 355-man occupation force to assist in the capture of the harbor. However, no missions were assigned to the battalion headquarters or Company “0,” almost as if Admiral Fort’s staff was ignorant of their existence.

Ignoring the obvious inappropriateness of the skip-echelon tasking, Currin instead considered the mission assigned to Company “P” and its capabilities for carrying it out Although Walker and his Raiders were good, they were not water-walkers, and that might sometimes be a requirement for this operation. The apparently shortest route from Nono to Tetemara was about 11 miles, through dense jungle, across seven rivers, and through the mangrove swamps contiguous to these rivers. Flattening out the ups and downs of this tortured topography would add another mile or two for a total planar distance of 12 or 13 miles through some of the most forbidding terrain on God’s green earth.

Having spent 20 days on a reconnaissance mission to New Georgia three months earlier and gone on reconnaissance patrols since his return to Segi Point on June 21, Currin was acutely aware that the two days allotted for the company to move from Nono to Tetemara would be insufficient, even under ideal conditions, which obviously. were not there. Apparently Admiral Fort did not know that the Japanese had reinforced the Viru Harbor garrison and now had many patrols in the area Company “P” would have to traverse, and this would retard the advance, even when the terrain did not. Furthermore, Currin had recently learned that an enemy garrison of undetermined strength and composition now occupied Nono.

Not relishing the prospect of leading his Raiders on a canoe and rubber boat landing against a defended beach, Currin had sent out a reconnaissance patrol immediately after he read the operation order to look for an alternate landing site. The patrol returned in mid-afternoon with information that the only beach suitable for their needs and undefended was at Regi, a village about a mile east of Nono. Reflecting on this information in the light of what he knew of the terrain and the enemy situation, Cumin felt strongly that a change in the operation order was called for. Accordingly, at 1600 on June 25, he radioed Admiral Fort and requested permission to land at Regi instead of Nono, to utilize Company “0” as well as “P,” and to begin the operation on the twenty-seventh instead of the twenty-eighth. In less than two hours he had a reply approving his request.

After nightfall on June 27, Currin’s Raiders embarked in their rubber boats, while he, his staff, and the guides embarked in two native war canoes (vouas), and the raiding party set out for Regi, a boat trip of six to eight miles along the coast to the west. The trip was made without incident, except in the overwrought imagination of some of the Raiders, and just before midnight the strange flotilla hove to off Regi to await the return of the native scouts who had been sent ahead to make sure no Japanese were in the village. At a few minutes after midnight, the scouts gave the “all clear,” and the rubber boats headed for the beach. By 0100 the landing party was ashore and had established a perimeter defense, and the rubber boats were on their way back to Segi Point, towed by the native canoes.

At dawn on the twenty-eighth, the Raiders departed Regi on the first leg of a trek that was to test the mettle of each of them. With Luckel’s Company “0” in the lead, the headquarters group in the center, and Walker’s Company “P” providing security for the rear, the battalion struck out purposefully through the jungle toward the northwest. After only a few hundred yards, however, the trail debauched into a mangrove swamp that provided a foretaste of the ordeal that lay ahead. In single file, the long column slithered through the stinking, viscous, black mud like a huge snake, marking its progress in feet rather than miles or even yards. After three hours, during which the battalion had advanced less than one and one-half miles, they had their first enemy contact.

While the column was halted for a 10-minute break, one of the native scouts came rushing up to Captain Walker and breathlessly reported that a 20-man Japanese patrol was coming up the trail only a few minutes behind the column. Quickly, Walker ordered Lieutenant DeVillo W. Brown to deploy his 3d Platoon to ambush the enemy. Before all of Brown’s Raiders were in position, however, the first Japanese came around a bend and suddenly found himself face-to-face with three Raiders standing in the trail.

It would be difficult to guess who was more surprised by this sudden encounter; however, the Marines recovered first and shot the Japanese before he could even raise his rifle. Three other enemy soldiers came running up to see what all the commotion was about and met the same fate. The remainder of the enemy patrol, apparently choosing not to contest the right of way further at that time, fled into the bush.

About three hours later, not long after the column had crossed the Lakuru River, a small enemy patrol (whether the same or another is unknown) again hit the rear guard. There were no casualties on either side in this encounter, but when Company “P” withdrew from its positions to rejoin the column, Sergeant John F. Sudro and his four-man outpost on the right flank were inadvertently left behind. What might have been a tragic loss, however, was averted by Sudro’s calm, competent leadership and the steadfastness of his men.

By the time Sudro realized that they had been left behind, it was too late to do anything about it. A Japanese patrol had already moved into the area surrounding the Marines and begun to set up camp. Completely oblivious to the five pairs of eyes that nervously followed their every move, the enemy busied themselves with camp chores: posting sentinels, building cook fires, boiling rice, brewing tea. After what seemed an eternity, the Japanese settled in for the night, and the Raiders could relax, but only a little. There was no sleep for any of the five that night, however, lest they start snoring and tip off the enemy to their presence. The Japanese were up and away at dawn, and, having waited until the enemy patrol was well out of earshot, Sudro and his men struck out through the jungle for Segi Point, which they reached some 48 hours later.

Meanwhile, the battalion pushed on through the bush, reaching the Mohi River at around 1700. Twilight was already settling over the jungle, and by the time everyone was across the river and settled in camp behind a tight perimeter, it was hard dark. Rain, which had fallen intermittently all day long, now began in earnest. The Raiders huddled under their ponchos, attempting to stay warm—there was no thought of staying dry—and braced themselves for a miserable night. After satisfying himself that his men were as well taken care of as the situation permitted, Currin met with his staff and company commanders to discuss their progress and to consider courses of action for the following day.

As a result of the delays arising from the two encounters with the Japanese and the unexpectedly difficult terrain, Currin knew that he was behind schedule; however, he didn’t realize how far behind until he ticked off the distance on his map. Instead of the six or so miles that he and the members of his staff estimated, they actually had covered not even half that distance. In 11 hours they had advanced a little less than two and three-quarters miles, and there was no reason to expect that the going would be easier farther along the trail. Obviously, they could not possibly be in position to attack by 0700 on June 30 as was expected, but how to advise Admiral Turner of the delay’?

Unable to get through by his own radio, Currin sent his message back to Segi Point by two native runners with a request that Kennedy relay it to Turner’s headquarters. Although there was no assurance his message would get through, Currin had no choice but to continue on toward Viru. For the next day, June 29, he decided that, after crossing the Choi River, he would divide his force and send Lieutenant DeVillo Brown and his 3rd Platoon of Company “P,” reinforced by a machine gun squad and a Boys antitank rifle, due west toward Tombe on the east side of Viru Inlet while the remainder of the force moved north to the headwaters of the Choi before heading west toward their objective.

After a thoroughly miserable night, the Raiders were up and on the trail as the first light of a sullen dawn began to filter through the jungle canopy. As anticipated, the going on the second day was no better than on the first and if anything was worse. The trek across the watershed separating the Mohi and Choi Rivers consumed most of the morning, and it was almost noon before the battalion had crossed the Choi. There the main body swung north along the right bank of the river, while Lieutenant Brown led his platoon west on the Tombe trail in compliance with Currin’s orders.

Brown’s platoon had advanced only about 200 yards on the Tombe trail, however, when they were ambushed by an estimated 45 Japanese dug in on the crest of a ridge overlooking the trail. As the point squad headed up the slope, the enemy suddenly opened fire with rifles and three light machine guns. The leading Raiders immediately hit the deck and returned fire, while Brown, using them as a base of fire, deployed the rest of the platoon to assault the enemy position, after an improvised “mortar” barrage to soften it up.

Before departing Segi Point, some of the Raiders had been issued short-fused, quarter-pound blocks of TNT, which Brown now redistributed to the men with the best throwing arms. On signal, the fuses were lit and the TNT blocks hurled at the enemy position, as the Raiders yelled “Marine mortar,” hoping to convince the Japanese that this was, indeed, mortar fire. After a minute or two of this TNT barrage, the charge began. As one of Brown’s men described the action to Clay Gowran, Chicago Tribune reporter accompanying the Raiders:

We went right up that ridge into the muzzle of that damned gun. There wasn‘t any withdrawal, or second charge, or anything like that. Five of the boys died going up, hut another, 5teve M. K/os, kept right on going    you should have seen that guy, sir….A bullet tore into his left leg and smacked him down so hard it sprained his right ankle, but he kept on going on his hands and knees. He had…[a] homemade bomb in each fist and a lighted cigarette in his mouth. When he got within throwing distance he lit the fuses and heaved them…. That settled the hash of those gunners with only sniperfire to heckle us, we went on up and over. There were 18 Jap bodies lying around the gun, sprawled out the way the bomb had tossed them. We found the packs of about 35 others abandoned farther back along the trail….

Not surprisingly, Walker’s Raiders passed their qualifying examination with flying colors, proving they were as good as the best, if not better. In the words of their company commander, Tony Walker: “They fought a magnificent action, driving a strong enemy force off the ridgeline in front of them ….Brown and his men were alone, did not know how many enemy they faced, and had lost some men killed in the ambush. Still they deployed and after vicious fight won the victory.”

The first of the 4th Raiders to be killed in action were Platoon Sergeant Orra E. Gilbert, Corporal Everette L Tower, Privates, first class, Marty J. Johnson and Rase L. Warren, and Private George A. Rossiter. Gilbert and Tower, were posthumously awarded the Army Distinguished Service Cross for their bravery and aggressiveness in the assault on the Japanese position.

When the firing began, Currin quickly ordered the main body off the trail and attempted to communicate with Brown by radio. The dense foliage, however, effectively blocked radio transmission, and Currin could do nothing but wait, chew on his mustache, and estimate the progress of the battle by the sound and volume of fire. It was almost 1400 before all firing ceased, and a few anxious minutes later Brown’s runner arrived to report the favorable outcome of the engagement. After hearing the report, Currin decided that the enemy probably was too strong along the Tombe trail for a single platoon, especially one whose effective strength was now reduced by one-third (Sudro and his four men plus the six casualties suffered in the firefight), and sent the runner back with instructions for Brown’s platoon to rejoin the column.

Brown and his men concealed their dead for later recovery and, carrying the wounded Klos on a makeshift litter, quickly returned to the main body. After detaching a party to follow independently with Klos, Currin ordered the march to resume. Now skirting the edge of a mangrove swamp, now alternately scrambling up the rain slackened forward slopes of ridges and sliding down their reverse slopes, invariably to splash into a rain-swollen stream at the bottom, the long column of tired men inched onward.

Long since, the Raiders’ jungle-camouflage utilities had taken on a uniform hue of jungle mud, and the knees and seats were torn and worn through from all the creeping and sliding. Worse yet, the men were beginning to take on a worn, frazzled look like their uniforms. Finally at around 1800, the column reached the headwaters of the Choi River and set up for the night in an abandoned village called Libo. About three hours later Klos and his party arrived at the bivouac, exhausted but safe and in good spirits.

Once again Currin took stock of his situation and found it even worse than it had been 24 hours earlier. He still had no radio communications with higher headquarters, hence no way of knowing whether or not his message had got through to Admiral Turner. Although their progress toward the objective was somewhat better than on the previous day, it was still disappointing. In 12 miserable hours on the trail, they had advanced less than four miles, although everyone estimated that they had hiked it least seven miles. Now new factors began to figure in the accounting: they were running low on food and ammunition for the machine guns.

The battalion had departed Segi Point with three days’ field rations and one unit of fire per man and one unit of fire per machine gun—fully adequate, given the planning criteria for the operation. The three encounters with the enemy, however, had used up a sizeable part of the ammunition reserve, and it was now obvious that the rations would be gone at least one full day before they reached Tetemara. As if that weren’t enough, Currin now discovered that his guides were all coast dwellers, had never before been over the trails they had been following, and knew no more, and probably less, of the lay of the land than he himself.

At dawn on the thirtieth, Currin tried once again to reach Guadalcanal by radio but without success. Now, as he signaled his Raiders to saddle up and move out, he could only hope that the message he had sent to Kennedy for transmission had been received and that Commander Stanley Leith was not at that very moment leading his squadron of three APDs Into Viru Harbor, believing that it had been seized hr the Raiders. Kennedy, however, had been unable to get through to Admiral Turner’s headquarters, so he radioed Currin’s message to Guadalcanal for retransmission. Although Turner did not learn of Currin’s delay until late on June 30, the information reached Admiral Fort in time for him to forewarn the APDs slated to support the attack on Vim.

Currin’s message also reached the Raiders waiting on Guadalcanal to embark for the New Georgia operation and caused them no little concern. In his diary entry for June 29, Corporal Henry C. “Popeye” Poppell, a veteran communicator with Company “A,” 1st Raiders, noted: “We intercept messages that the Fourth [Raiders] had run into trouble on their mission. All this gives us the urge to get going and do our part.” In only a few days they would “got going” in a big way.

Commander Leith had, indeed, been forewarned of the delay, and at the very moment when Currin’s Raiders were setting out in the pouring rain on the third day’s march, the Hopkins, Kilty, and Crosby with Captain Raymond E. Kinch’s 355-man landing force embarked (Kinch’s own Company “B,” 103d Infantry, a detachment of Seabees, a detachment of coast artillery, and a naval base unit) were hove to off Viru Harbor, attempting to contact Currin by radio. After repeated, unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the Raiders, Leith ordered his ships to move cautiously toward the entrance to Viru Harbor. At 0730, as the APDs closed the range to the shore, the 3-inch gun on Tetemara Point prematurely opened fire on the slow moving vessels and missed. Quickly, before the enemy could reload and re-lay the gun, Leith ordered his ships to withdraw beyond range, while he reassessed the situation.

Loath to abandon the Raiders who might be in serious trouble, Leith maintained station off the harbor mouth and awaited further developments. By l000 the situation ashore was still obscure, and at that time, with Admiral Fort’s permission, the ships withdrew from Viru to put the landing force ashore at Nono. Major Hara, drawing the wrong conclusion from what he observed off Viru, or perhaps wishfully thinking, reported to Major General Sasaki at Munda that his force had repulsed an attempted American landing.

Meanwhile, the Raiders pressed on through the jungle, following a trail that Currin himself had selected, using his map and compass. Around noon the column came to a fork in the trail, and there Currin split his force, sending Walker’s Company “P’ (minus Lieutenant Mal McCarthy’s 2nd Platoon) down the left branch to attack Tombe independently on the following day. He and the rest of the force would continue on to the west, past the head of Viru Harbor, then swing to the south and east, hopefully arriving on the morrow in time and condition to attack the main Japanese force in Tetemara, across the narrows from Tombe.

To reach a spot from which to attack, however, would be no easy task for Currin’s force. His already exhausted and hungry Raiders would have to cross four rivers (the Viru, the Tita, an unnamed river, and the Mango), traverse two mangrove swamps, and finally scale a steep slope to reach the ridge that led to their objective. The 16-hour march on June 30 turned out to be such a nightmare that the battle on the following day would seem to be a relief.

The column moved out at 0600 and kept going until 2200, except for a 20-minute break at 1200, when Tony Walker’s company peeled off, and another at 1800, when they reached the Mango River. Night was already falling when the weary Raiders finally emerged from the bush onto the bank of the Mango. While his men took a break, Currin used the remaining few minutes of daylight for a visual reconnaissance of the crossing site and the terrain beyond. What he saw in the rapidly failing light was far from encouraging. Beyond the sullen, noisome waters of the river another mangrove swamp stretched for what seemed to be miles, blocking the way to the ridge and the site selected for the nights bivouac.

Currin knew that long before they were across the river it would be pitch dark, and when they got into the swamp there would be no way for the men to maintain contact with one another. They were too tired to hold on to one another’s packs, but they surely would get lost if they didn’t. As he mulled over alternative courses of action and faced up to the distinct possibility that he would not reach Tetemara on time the following day, one of the native guides came up with a solution to the contact problem.

As the very concerned battalion commander chewed on his mustache and wrestled with his dilemma, he became aware that one of the natives was chattering excitedly and pointing across the river with one hand while tugging at his sleeve with the other to get his attention. At first he had no idea what the native was trying to tell him but finally, sighting along the guide’s pointing arm into the inky blackness, saw the light—literally. In the swamp where the guide pointed was a patch of pale, greenish light that glowed eerily in the darkness. “What in hell is that?” he wondered aloud and almost instantly heard “Foxfire” muttered in a soft Southern drawl by one of the nearby Raiders. In a flash of cognition energized by those two syllables, Currin understood and accepted the guide’s solution to their problem.

After sending the guides on ahead, Currin formed up his weary Raiders and sent them into the stinking, shoulder-deep waters of the river. On the opposite bank, the Raiders were met by the guides, each of whom was carrying a heaping armful of natural light—glowing chunks from rotting logs permeated with microscopic, bioluminescent organ-isms. As the tired men slogged past the guides, each received a piece of the glowing punk and plunged into the swamp, stumbling after the will-o’-the-wisp that flickered just ahead, leading deeper and deeper into the dark. Soon the column took on the appearance of a giant, articulated glowworrn, slowly tracing a phosphorescent line across the expanse of ve1vety blackness that marked the swamp.

Almost three hours passed before the last of Currin’s men dragged his weary body from the slime of the mangrove swamp onto comparatively solid ground. Their ordeal, however, was not over, and without a halt they tackled the last obstacle between them and the bivouac site on the ridge: 200 yards of nearly vertical, rain slackened slope. For another hour, the bone-weary Raiders struggled up the slippery trail; often on hands and knees; unable to see; tripping over vines and rocks; cursing the inanimate jungle, the rain, the darkness; and focusing their hatred. howsoever illogically, on the Japanese as the cause of all their miseries.

It was 2200 before the rear guard finally closed on the bivouac site, and yet another hour passed before the perimeter was tied in and the men had cleaned their weapons (by touch, since lights were forbidden) in preparation for the following day’s assault. Finally, just before midnight, the camp fell silent as the off-watch men, wrapped in their ponchos to ward off the chill, fell into the dreamless sleep of the totally exhausted.

Meanwhile Tony Walker’s Raiders had found the going much easier and. not wanting to risk prematurely alerting the enemy to their presence, had gone into bivouac after covering only a mile or so on the trail to Tombe. Up and back on the trail at dawn on July 1, they quickly covered the two and one-half miles to Tombe and by 0845 were in position to attack, with the headquarters section in the center, Lieutenant Robert I. Popelka’s 1st Platoon on the right, and Lieutenant Brown’s 3rd Platoon on the left. Achieving complete surprise with a sudden, heavy volume of automatic weapons fire, Walker and his Raiders charged the village and killed the entire defending force of 13 Japanese without suffering a single casualty themselves. Once again Walkers men had demonstrated their complete mastery of the school of the soldier.

Copyright:  ReView Publications

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