Guadalcanal: Mount Austen and the Gifu, 1942-43

The battle, stage by stage

1. 8 December 1942

   The Army arrives

   The 132nd Infantry of the Americal Division - an Illinois National Guard regiment - comes ashore at Kukum and Lunga Point, joining the force relieving the 1st Marine Division, which has held the perimeter around Henderson Field since August. Second Lieutenant John George, a former Illinois state 1,000-yard rifle champion, comes with it, reportedly with his own scoped Winchester Model 70 deer rifle in .30-06. His 2nd Battalion first holds positions near Lunga Point. Inland, Japanese naval observers on Mount Austen, about six miles south-west of the airfield, have watched the field and its shipping since September; Colonel Oka's men are digging in on its western slopes.

2. 17-26 December 1942

   Up Wright Road

   Ordered to take Mount Austen, the 3rd Battalion climbs the new jeep track to its end at Hill 35 on 18 December; next morning its commander, Lieutenant Colonel William C. Wright, is killed by machine-gun fire and the road is named for him. The Japanese observers have slipped away from the summit toward a strongpoint the Americans will call the Gifu, after the Japanese prefecture many of its defenders come from: a horseshoe of some 45-50 coconut-log pillboxes, roofed three logs thick and covered with earth, between Hill 31 and Hill 27. The 3rd Battalion reaches Hill 31 on 24 December and is stopped cold; the 1st Battalion takes the open knolls of Hills 20, 29 and 30. Christmas attacks toward Hill 27 fail.

3. 1-3 January 1943

   Ferry's march to Hill 27

   With the frontal attacks stalled, Lieutenant Colonel George F. Ferry's 2nd Battalion - John George's battalion - marches up Wright Road to Hill 11, then on 1 January sets off on a wide hook through the jungle to the south: less than a mile as the crow flies, but about 6,000 yards on foot. Behind an artillery barrage, its leading men reach the bare crest of Hill 27 at 09:07 on 2 January without firing a shot; by 11:30 the whole battalion is on top. Then the Japanese react: six counterattacks that afternoon, and by Miller's count 8 killed and 70 wounded in the first 40 minutes of digging in. The battalion holds, and Mount Austen now lies inside American lines.

4. January 1943 (place and dates approximate)

   The rifleman's war

   This is the war John George described in Shots Fired in Anger: jungle so thick that most fights happen well inside 100 yards, heat shimmer in the scope, and Japanese marksmen who are patient, well hidden and nearly smokeless. Whenever he can, George volunteers to snipe, usually with a spotter on binoculars, hunting the enemy riflemen with his Model 70. On at least one occasion a Japanese bullet passes so close to his head that its crack damages his hearing. Popular retellings say he killed 11 snipers in four days while men laughed at his 'toy rifle'; those figures are not confirmed here. The positions shown - George on the western slope of Hill 27, a sniper in the jungle edge about 150 m away - are illustrative only.

5. 9-18 January 1943

   Surrounding the Gifu

   Its strength worn down - about 112 killed in 22 days on the mountain, by Miller's count - the 132nd is relieved by the 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry, 25th Division, under Major Stanley R. Larsen. Attacks from 10 January make little headway against the pillboxes. On 15 January loudspeakers broadcast an appeal to surrender; there is no real response (by one account a handful come out). Larsen chooses to surround the position, and by 18 January the ring is closed and the weak western side is under attack.

6. 22-23 January 1943

   One tank, one last charge

   A single Marine light tank, the only one of three to survive the trail, goes in on 22 January covered by 16-18 riflemen. It knocks out three pillboxes, crosses the position and destroys more, opening a gap about 200 yards wide. At about 02:30 on 23 January Major Takeyoshi Inagaki leads most of the remaining defenders in a final charge; he and, by Pacific Wrecks' account, the last 85 Japanese are killed and buried in a mass grave on Hill 31. By the end of the day the Gifu is clear.

7. 1-9 February 1943

   Verahue to Tenaro

   George's 2nd Battalion has one more job. On 1 February it lands unopposed at Verahue on the south-west coast with Colonel Alexander M. George's force, about 1,500 men, and pushes north round the end of the island while the 161st Infantry comes west along the north coast. They meet at Tenaro on 9 February: the Japanese have already evacuated about 10,000 men by night, and the island is declared secure. The fighting ashore has cost about 1,600 American soldiers and Marines killed; the Japanese have lost more than 20,000. John George goes on to Merrill's Marauders in Burma.