At Brisbane, Australia, the submarine USS Grampus is moored at New Farms Wharf when strange cargo comes aboard - cases of ration packs, folding camp chairs, four rubber boats, two collapsible canoes, a little whiskey, a great deal of radio equipment, and four Englishmen and Australians in American Sailor outfits.

These men are headed for Buka, where the Japanese have established a major forward base to shorten the range for their Zeros heading for Guadalcanal. However, the new base is beyond the visual range of coastwatchers. Worse, the Tokyo Express is refueling at Buka, and these moves must be reported. The Coastwatcher service, headed by Royal Australian Navy Cdr. Eric Feldt, needs to plug this gap. Henry Josselyn, former assistant district officer on Guadalcanal and Nick Waddell, are to be sent to the island of Vella Lavella, directly from the new base in the Shortland Islands, to report.

The Coastwatchers ask US Rear Adm. John McCain for a PBY Catalina to deliver the Coastwatchers, and McCain says, "No, sir!" to Walter Brooksbank, Australia's director of Naval Intelligence. Brooksbank is astounded. A civilian, he has never been called "sir." McCain says that if he sends in a PBY, the Japanese will send in a Zero, and kill everyone.

Brooksbank goes to Vice Adm. Robert Ghormley, and Ghormley agrees to let USS Grampus drop off the Coastwatchers enroute to its war patrol.

Josselyn and Waddell have a hard time preparing for this mission, as all their supplies have to be in waterproof bags, must be portable, nothing weighing more than 50 pounds, and all small enough to fit through a submarine's 30-inch-by-30-inch hatch.

The manpower for this mission is doubled with the appointment of Australian John Keenan, a former Patrol Officer on Bougainville and Carden Seton, a former Shortlands planter, who knows the entire area. Seton is a volatile man who can look after a sick person with utter gentleness, yet is also capable of extreme anger and violence.

To maintain secrecy, the four are dressed as US Sailors. So on the evening of the 6th, they have a Navy-style going away party. They get royally drunk, and stagger aboard well oiled.

Awaiting the four below is Col. C.G. Roberts of the Australian Army, who is there to brief the Coastwatchers. He is less than thrilled to find them drunk. The briefing is grim.

In Long Island, production models of the F6F Hellcat fighter are rolling off the production line, two days after the first production plane's test flight. This aircraft will sweep the Pacific of Japanese planes. After the war, Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi Zero fighter, will claim that the Hellcat owes its design advantages to a Zero captured in the Aleutians (referred to earlier on the June 3rd, 1942 notes in this series). This is not so. The F6F's design was approved long before this Zero was captured.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt takes his first trip out of Washington since the war has begun, to check on the war efforts. In Detroit, he surprises 5,000 workmen busily constructing M-4 Sherman tanks. His trip will take him on to Milwaukee, to watch steam turbines and propeller shafts get produced at the Allis-Chalmers plant. Next, the Seattle Boeing aircraft plant, and from there, Henry Kaiser's Portland, Oregon, shipyards.

In Portland, Roosevelt watches the Liberty ship Joseph N. Teal get launched. It is the first in the world ever to hit the water 10 days after keel laying. Roosevelt is begged for a speech, and handed a microphone. "You know, I'm not supposed to be here," he says. "So you are possessors of a secret - a secret that even the newspapers of the United States don't know. I hope you will keep it." The workers do.

In China, Lt. Gen. Joseph Stilwell writes, "Chinese conscription is a scandal. Only the unfortunates without money or influence are grabbed. Many men of military age are kept in the middle schools. One example, 26 years old, married, three children, but son of a local official." Stilwell complains that a top Chinese general lives with his wife and children in a villa many miles from the front, and never visits the battlefield.

Lt. Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery, commanding the British 8th Army, changes his plan for attack at El Alamein. He now plans to cut passages through enemy minefields so that his armor can pass through unopposed, break clear of the Axis, and when well behind them, wheel and place themselves across the enemy lines of communications, forcing Rommel to counterattack to fight his way out, or starve. Maj. Gen. Bernard Freyberg, commanding 2nd New Zealand Division, doesn't think this will work. He has little faith that British armor will support New Zealand troops, from hard experience. He protests the plan to Monty's staff officers. They talk to Monty, and Monty says, follow my plan. The armor will support Freyberg's attack.

Vice Adm. Robert Ghormley, commanding the Southwest Pacific, meets with two of his top aides in Noumea, and insists on sending Army troops to take Ndeni Island. His aides urge him to immediately reinforce Guadalcanal instead. Meanwhile the Japanese are more decisive, sending the seaplane tender Chitose and the cruiser Tatsuta to join six destroyers in landing part of the 4th Maizuro Special Naval Landing Force at Tassafaronga. 450 soldiers, 150 Sailors, four anti-tank guns, and four regimental guns splash ashore. Some wounded men return to Rabaul. The Japanese plan a massive assault on the Americans for October 15th.

Faced with the realities of a war to end racism, the Daughters of the American Revolution reverse a 1939 stand. Then they had banned black contralto Marian Anderson from singing in their Constitution Hall on racial grounds. Her stubborn manager Sol Hurok has again asked the DAR to let Anderson sing. The DAR responds by formally inviting Anderson to be soloist in one of their war-relief concerts that winter.

It may seem odd to modern eyes that Constitution Hall is of importance, but Washington DC is still a city, in 1942, that lacks many amenities. Until the war, it has been a sleepy swamp populated by government workers, foreign diplomats, old-money society matrons, and desperately poor blacks squeezed into alleys with one water tap for 40 people. Now this city is increasingly packed with government officials and military men from all over the world, administering the greatest war effort in history. Their only baseball and football stadium is Griffith Park (a rusty firetrap that doesn't even have parking for players). The vast array of Smithsonian museums on the Mall, the Kennedy Center, and the Metro are yet to be even dreamed of. But Washingtonians, if they lack museums, do have one thing they lack today: a major league baseball team. The 1942 Washington Senators finished the season 62-89, in seventh place in the American League, under Bucky Harris. No Senator hit more than nine home runs (Mickey Vernon), and three Senator pitchers lost more than 15 games. The Philadelphia Athletics, under the venerable Connie Mack, finished last, 55-99. Their top pitcher, Phil Marchildon, 17-14, 4.20, will enter the Royal Canadian Air Force, get shot down, and spend much of the war as a German POW, losing 60 pounds.

In Moscow, the Soviet newspaper Pravda commences a series of cartoons depicting British generals as incompetent Blimps. Three British generals, "General What-if-they-lick-us, General What's-the-hurry, General Why-take-risks," are confronted by two American generals, "General Guts" and "General Decision." The basis for these cartoons is a speech by Wendell Willkie earlier calling for a "Second Front now." The hard-pressed Soviets want a quick Allied invasion of Europe, but the Allies are in no position to do so. Meanwhile, Stalin answers a three-point questionnaire from AP's Henry Cassidy. First answer: the Second Front "occupies a place of first-rate importance in the current situation," and that "Allied aid to the Soviet Union has so far been little effective." The Allies must "fulfil their obligations fully and on time."

What remains of the Soviet capacity for resistance? "I think that the Soviet capacity of resisting the German brigands is in strength not less, if not greater, than the capacity of Fascist Germany, or of any other aggressive power, to secure for itself world domination," Stalin answers.

The Royal Air Force's Bomber Command hurls 237 aircraft at the city of Osnabruck. Six aircraft are lost - 2.8 percent of the force. The Pathfinders illuminate the Dummer See, a large lake northeast of the city. The bombers concentrate their attack and hammer the center of town. The city reports 149 houses destroyed, 530 seriously damaged, 2,784 lightly damaged. Six industrial premises are destroyed and 14 damaged. Also hit are six public buildings, five churches, four schools, one hospital, and the local gasworks. 65 people are killed - 45 civilians, 16 policemen or servicemen, and four foreign workers. 151 are injured.

In Stalingrad, Gen. Friedrich Paulus' 6th Army's offensive slows down as the Germans are running short of replacements. Some German battalions are made up to strength by use of Russian POWs who prefer fighting for Hitler to starving in his POW camps. While the 6th Army regroups, Hitler sends Paulus a message "reaffirming the total occupation of Stalingrad as Army Group B's most important mission."

October 7th, 1942...USS Washington, preceded by the light cruiser Atlanta, and destroyers Benham and Walke, sorties from Tongabatu, heading course 275T, straight for Guadalcanal. The force is escort to the 164th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard unit from the Dakotas, part of the Americal Division, being sent to relieve the exhausted Marines on "Starvation Island." The battleship spends the morning drilling her 5-inch gun crews. Gun boss Ed Hooper "severs" electrical lines in drills to force his gunners to practice loading and firing weapons on secondary systems and local control.

Meanwhile, other Sailors turn to to remove thousands of square feet of linoleum and wood that cover mess decks, galleys, offices, and the wardrooms. After the disasters of Savo Island, when American cruisers turned into infernos from wood and linoleum furnishings, the US Navy is taking a more realistic and harder approach to damage control. Even the battleship's wardroom piano is hurled over the side, without ceremony. More realistic approaches to naval battles include tougher damage control training and the installation of low-velocity fog sprinklers and hoses to combat fire.

The American Marines on Guadalcanal, exhausted and short of supply, choose to attack to prevent the Japanese from attacking them. Maj. Gen. Archibald Vandegrift knows that the best defense is a good offense. The plan calls for two battalions of the 7th Marines and the Whaling Group (the Scout-Sniper detachment with the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines) to turn inland, and cross the Matanikau at the One-log bridge. Once across, the Whaling Group will attack down the first ridgeline west of the rive, while the 7th Marines wheel battalions abreast on successive ridgelines, west of Whaling, all heading north. This maneuver should trap large Japanese forces around the Matanikau, and the 5th Marines will pass through and advance to Kokumbona. The Americans will use artillery and air power to hammer the Japanese.

Among the Americans preparing for the attack is journalist John Hersey, with the 7th Marines. The 7th's executive officer, Lt. Col. Julian Frisbee, briefs Hersey, and asks the reporter, "Have you ever seen men killed on the field of battle?"
Hersey has not.
"It's possible to think of the dead enemy as dead animals," Frisbee says. "But dead Marines look just like dirty-faced little boys who have gone to bed without being tucked in by their mothers."
The attack goes in at 7 a.m. The Marines easily reach the Matanikau and find four Japanese washing clothes. The Japanese reach for their Arisaka rifles, and are cut down. The rest of the Japanese defenders give ground slowly, despite 75mm fire from halftrack-mounted guns. By nightfall, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines holds the Matanikau from the coast to the flank of 2nd Battalion, while Whaling Group and 7th Marines have reached bivouacs east of One-log bridge with little opposition. Bad communications prevent the Japanese high command from realizing what is going on.
While Marines move through the jungle, using Army cavalry sabers as machetes, the Guadalcanal Cactus Air Force receives reinforcements, 11 P-39s, two TBF Avengers, and two J2F biplanes for search-rescue. But the Japanese unload another 600 men, two regimental guns, ammo, and provisions at Tassafaronga that night.

The German disguised merchant raider Komet sails from Wilhelmshaven to begin her second raiding cruise. She runs into trouble from British mines in the English Channel, which sink four of her escorting minesweepers.

In Vichy France, Pierre Laval tries a new effort to promote the image of the nation's ruler, Marshal Henri Petain. Petain's face will appear on stamps, china, ashtrays, badges, hatbands, blotters, coins, and shaving mugs. Milk bottles bear Petain's colors and cheerful slogans about healthy children.

USS Grampus sails from Brisbane and heads northeast. For the next six days, the four Coastwatchers aboard learn about submarine duty the hard way - enduring heat, melting ice cream, the complicated toilets, and a depthbombing by a Japanese destroyer.

A war within a war heats up. The Nazi government, enraged at the British shackling and shooting POWs on Sark earlier in the week, announces that it will place all Allied POWs taken at Dieppe in irons. The Germans say they will do this until the British agree not to fetter their POWs. The Germans also warn that "In future, all terror and sabotage units of the British and their henchmen, who behave not like soldiers but like bandits, will be treated as such by the German troops and, wherever they appear, they will be ruthlessly finished off."

Fierce weather closes the Alaska-Siberia Lend-lease route, which has so far shipped 14 A-20 bombers and 30 P-40s to Russia via Fairbanks. The Americans take advantage to reacquire some 200 P-39 Airacobras for Operation Torch in North Africa. In London, planning for Torch continues. The Allies decide to launch their first airborne operation of the war, delivering American paratroopers to North Africa during Torch. The airborne armada will fly over neutral Spain, which has few night fighters to protect its neutrality. The Spanish will be told the objective of this flight, so as to avoid harassment by Franco's forces.

The defense of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific is strengthened by the arrival of 32 New Zealand officers and 709 enlisted men.

The fighting at Stalingrad now centers on the battle for the Tractor Factory, a mass of steel and brooding stone at the center of the ruined city. The Germans send in two infantry divisions backed by tanks against the 37th Guards Division. The fighting rages in housing areas around the factory, with gains measured in rooms. By 6 p.m., the Germans have taken all their gains - one block of apartments in the housing estate. A few minutes later, a fortuitous salvo of Soviet Katyusha rockets annihilates an entire German battalion with one salvo. The Germans have lost four battalions in taking a block of flats.

A German lieutenant in 24th Panzer Division writes, "We have fought during 15 days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine-guns, and bayonets. Already by the third day 54 German corpses are strewn in the cellars, on the landings, and the staircases. The front is a corridor between burnt-out rooms; it is the thin ceiling between two floors. Help comes from neighboring houses by fire escapes and chimneys. There is a ceaseless struggle from noon to night. From story to story, faces black with seat, we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And imagine Stalingrad; 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand struggles. The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses...

"Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure."

Russian author Konstantin Smirnov has a different take, which he reports to Time magazine: "It is evening and we are standing on the outskirts of the city. Before us is the battlefield: smoking hillocks and flaming streets. Everywhere there is a bluish-black smoke cut by fairy arrows of mortar fire from our guards. Ashes float in the air. White German flares light up the long circular front. First we hear the Nazi bombers, then the explosions of their bombs. Next comes the roar of our bombers sailing west. They drop yellow flares to illuminate the German position, and a few seconds later they drop cargoes of death.

"On the East bank of the Volga we see the supply system in operation. Our ferryboat is overloaded with five trucks full of munitions, a company of Red Army men, and a number of nurses. Bombs are whistling all around. Next to me sits a doctor's assistant, a young Ukrainian woman named Victoria Tshepnya. This is her fifth crossing. As the ferryboat approaches the landing stage, Victoria confesses: 'You know me, always a little frightened to get out. I've already been wounded twice, once very seriously. But I don't believe I'll die yet because I haven't begun to live.

'It must be frightful to have been wounded twice, to have fought for 15 months, and now to make a fifth trip to a flaming city. In 15 minutes she will pass through burning buildings, and somewhere under the rain of shrapnel and bombs will pick up a wounded man and bring him back to the ferryboat. Then she will make her sixth trip.

'We are in the city. Near the river the streets are still black, except when the bombs land. In that moment the outline of the buildings is silhouetted against the sky and reminds one of a fortress. Indeed Stalingrad is a fortress. Underground we enter the staff headquarters. Telegraph girls, their faces pale from sleepless nights and explosion dust, tap out dots and dashes. I try to light a match, but it is quickly smothered. Here underground there is not enough oxygen.

"Now we are riding through the streets in a dilapidated gazik (old Soviet-made car) to a command point. We pass a gate through which roll squeaking wagons loaded with fresh bread. Evidently the building houses a bakery. The city is still alive."

At Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, Heinrich Himmler briefs Adolf Hitler on the progress of exterminating Jews at Sobibor and Belzec. Hitler wants the operation done faster. Herbert Linden, the Ministerial Director of the Minister of the Interior, says it might be better to burn the corpses of those murdered, instead of burying them. Another generation, Linden says, "may think differently of the matter."

SS General Odilo Globocnik says, "But, gentlemen, if a generation coming after us should be so cowards and so corrupt as not to understand out deeds, which are so beneficial and necessary, then, gentlemen, the whole of National Socialism will have been in vain. Rather, we should bury bronze plates with the corpses on which we should write that it was we who had the courage to accomplish this gigantic task!"

Hitler answers, "Yes, my dear Globocnik, that is the truth of the matter. I entirely agree with you."

500 miles away, in Auschwitz, German doctors are busy that day, using the corpses of specially murdered Jews for medical experiments. Dr. Johann Kremer, one of the experimenters, puts a living patient on his dissection table, and asks the prisoner his medical history. After taking the information, an orderly kills the patient with an injection to the heart. Kremer then removes the liver, spleen, and pancreas for study. His work is later filed for Reich medical laboratories. After the war, Kremer draws a 10-year prison term from Polish courts, and a 10-year one from West Germany. Postwar authorities for use, due to its unethical origin ban the medical research.

October 8th, 1942...On the bridge of USS Washington, Rear Adm. Willis "Ching Chong China" Lee relieves the tension and maintains morale by swapping jokes with enlisted men, and reading lurid novels. The battleship's captain, Glenn Davis, placidly chews gum. However, both spend most of their time, discussing gunnery problems, working things out with gun boss Ed Hooper with maps, graphs, and formulae.

At Noumea, Ghormley faces facts. He postpones the Ndeni landing and orders the 164th Regiment of the Americal Division to Guadalcanal.

On Guadalcanal, torrential rain turns the hills to slides and flatlands to goo. It takes all morning for Whaling Group and 7th Marines to reach the crest of the ridge on the west bank of the Matanikau. In the late evening, Company H, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines descends the eastern slopes of the valley eroded by the Matanikau toward the first fork, accompanied by John Hersey.

As the Marines reach the river, a Japanese shot rings out, and battle is joined. Japanese mortars and machine guns open up with a "thump" that "vibrated not just your eardrums, but your entrails," Hersey later writes.

The Marines are trapped on low ground under heavy fire. Aware that they may die in a useless fight, they begin to scramble up the slippery hill and away from the battle. Then the company commander, Capt. Charles A. Rigaud, hearing his men say, "Withdraw," stands up on his feet amid sniper fire. Rigaud shouts out, "Who in Christ's name gave that order?" The Marines freeze in their tracks. They are more afraid of their captain than the enemy.

Rigaud pours out distinctive Marine sarcasm and orders, designed solely to get his men back into the fight. "Where do you guys think you're going? Get back in there! What do you guys do, invent orders? Listen, it's going to be dark and we got a job to do...you guys make me ashamed. Gosh, and they call you Marines."
The Marines get the point. They turn back to fight. After a few minutes, Rigaud withdraws his company - in order, like Marines. Hersey later uses the incident to write a book about Guadalcanal, focusing on the single engagement, called "Into the Valley." It is a classic of war reportage.
Vandegrift gets the point, too. He terminates operations west of the Matanikau and withdraws his troops. The Japanese, however, suffer from bad communications - their radios are inferior to American equipment - and keep their troops on the river, facing east. The Marines are thus able to hit them in the rear as they withdraw.
That evening, the Tokyo Express sails again, with seaplane tender Nisshin as the center ship. Nisshin, normally configured to operate seaplanes and midget submarines (an interesting pairing) is loaded with six AA guns, two 100-mm howitzers, a tractor, and 180 men. Four destroyers carrying 18 mortars and 560 men of the 4th Maizuru Special Naval Landing Force join her. Seven SBD Dauntless dive bombers, four TBF Avengers, and 11 F4F Wildcats intercept the convoy 140 miles from Guadalcanal and run into her escort of Rufe seaplanes, a knockoff of the Zero. The Japanese lose three Rufes, but the Americans score no hits, and lose a Wildcat (but not her pilot) and a Dauntless (with her crew).
That evening, the convoy unloads its supplies, hurls a few shells at the Americans, and heads back.

The British government, on hearing of the German threats to shackle British POWs, announces they will shackle an equal number of German POWs. The Canadian government, despite misgivings, agrees to support this policy, and POWs in England and Bowmanville, Ontario, in Canada, are bound. This retaliation becomes the basis for the later novel and movie "The McKenzie Break," about a fictional breakout of German POWs.

In reality, at OflagVIIB in Eichstaett, 107 officers and 20 enlisted men captured at Dieppe are fallen out and marched to the camp's castle, where their hands are tied with rope for 12 hours daily. The Germans quickly run out of rope and replace them with handcuffs. Later the Germans replace those with chains with padlocks at each end, and finally the proper shackles arrive - two steel bands for each wrist connected by 18 inches of chain. POWs are shackled from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Like all POWs through history, the Allied POWs soon fashion homemade keys, to the annoyance of the German guards.

Faced with massive casualties at Stalingrad, Friedrich Paulus asks his subordinate division commanders for his actual ration strength versus combat strength. On hand he has 334,000 men. Only 66,549 are combat troops. Gen. "Thunderball" Zeitzler, the head of the Army, orders his rear area commands to release as many men as possible to the front. The Germans dig in to await reinforcements. So do the exhausted Soviets. Gen. Wolfram von Richtofen, heading the Luftwaffe forces at Stalingrad, diaries, "Absolute quiet at Stalingrad."

The Komet turns aside into Dunkirk to await another chance to break into the Atlantic Ocean. This disguised German merchant raider is a freighter converted into an auxiliary cruiser with hidden guns and torpedoes. Komet has already set World War II records for German warships' northernmost cruise (across Russia's north coast) and southernmost (just north of what is now the Australian Antarctic Territory); both on the same raiding voyage in 1940.

October 9th, 1942...In Stalag VIIB at Lamsdorf, the Germans shackle 1,500 British and Canadian POWs with pieces of Red Cross string 18 inches long. They also discontinue the issue of Red Cross food parcels, cigarettes, regular mail, sports, concerts, and educational classes.

In London, Dwight D. Eisenhower gets paperwork from the British War Office that puts the British First Army directly under his command for Operation Torch. In World War I, Allied high command consisted of Marshal Foch, with separate American, British, and French commands. Each nation had rights to appeal orders. To Ike, this violates unity of command. He has insisted that all commands be unified and joint. If an Englishman is in charge of a force, his deputy is an American. If an American leads, his deputy is British. Ike will not tolerate backbiting between Allies. His determination succeeds. Postwar movies, memoirs, and historical debate notwithstanding, the wartime alliance between Britain and America works smoothly from the highest levels to the soldiers in the field.

The Afrika Korps suffers in the Alamein desert from dull food: tinned meat, hard biscuits, fewer vegetables, and none fresh. The Germans actually have to beg for vegetables from the Italian units they "corset" in the defensive areas. Rommel's plan is to have German troops to "stiffen" his less well motivated and equipped Italian allies. Rommel particularly fears the Australian and New Zealand forces.

Back at Guadalcanal, the Tokyo Express heads north. At 6:55 a.m., nine SBD Dauntlesses and six Army P-39s jump the convoy and its escorting Rufes. The P-39s have an easier time coping with the bulky floatplanes than with real Zeros, and splash three of them. One SBD fails to return. No hits, however.

That same morning, clear skies rule as the Marines jump off on their attack from the rear. Three battalions of Marines storm through the jungle and through ravines. Lt. Col. Chesty Puller's 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, on the flank guard, discovers the Japanese 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, in a wooded ravine. Puller calls for artillery to support his mortars in a "machine for extermination." The Americans rain ordnance on the Japanese, who attempt to escape up the ravine. That puts them under direct machine gun and Marine rifle fire. The Marines are noted for their marksmanship, and this battle is no different. When Puller runs out of mortar ammunition, he withdraws, circles back, and crosses the Matanikau to safety.

The operation is over, and the Marines have lost 65 dead and 125 wounded. The Marines believe the Japanese defenders have escaped the attack, but an officer's diary captured later reports that the 4th Infantry Regiment was severely mauled, losing no fewer than 690 men in this action.

The capture of the diary reveals a weakness in the Japanese army - that their officers and men routinely carry diaries and important documents into battle. While the average American cannot decipher Japanese ideographs, Japanese-American soldiers in a special intelligence unit on Guadalcanal (they have to live under heavy guard so as not to be shot at for their skin pigmentation) can breeze through the characters.

As the Marines move back, 27 Japanese Zeros arrive over Guadalcanal with the usual mission of establishing air supremacy. They are intercepted by 27 F4F fighters and eight P-39 Airacobras, who are unable to find the Zeros in cloud cover. One F4F is lost - the pilot's oxygen fails, and the plane crashes. The Japanese also fail to find their enemies in the clouds. Exasperated, war is called off due to clouds.

Later that day, 20 F4F Wildcats of VMF-121 reinforce the American defenders, along with five SBD Dauntlesses and three TBF Avengers.

That evening, the Japanese light cruiser Tatsuta and seven destroyers, laden with 400 more men of the 4th Maizuru Special Naval Landing Force, arrive. They also bring 770 Army soldiers and Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake himself. Most of the 770 men are the headquarters staff of Hyakutake's command, the 17th Army. Guadalcanal's importance is such that an Army command is assigned to the verminous island.

Hyakutake comes ashore with bags of rice and other supplies. He is stunned to see ragged figures emerge from the brush timidly. They appear to be walking skeletons with long, dirty hair, and ragged, threadbare clothing that were once uniforms. One man reports that they are survivors of the long-defeated Ichiki Detachment and are here to help unload supplies.

Amazed, Hyakutake and his staff haul the army's papers and ceremonial flag inland to set up headquarters.

October 10th, 1942...USS Washington heads through "Torpedo Junction" north of Espiritu Santo. The battleship launches three Kingfisher seaplanes. Two for ASW patrol, one to tow target sleeves for the AA machine guns.

At dawn off Guadalcanal, the light cruiser Tatsuta and her five escorting destroyers are high-tailing it for Rabaul and its supply of Asahi beer when the Cactus Air Force (the US name for their air units on Guadalcanal) arrive. The Americans send in 15 SBDs, six TBFs, 15 F4Fs, and eight P-39s. It is the largest operation yet mounted by the Cactus Air Force. They are met by two Rufes and two float observation planes that are all shot down in short order. However, the American bombing is less impressive, and the only damage is to the destroyer Nowaki, which suffers 11 dead and wounded. One P-39 and one SBD are lost.

The loss of the four floatplanes leaves the Japanese R Area Air Force without a single operational aircraft. This odd air unit originally consisted of 52 seaplanes for reconnaissance and harassment. One of its planes included "Washing Machine Charlie," a two-engined seaplane with unsynchronized engines that bombed Henderson Field by night, causing more irritation from its noise than damage from its bombs. Its other well-known plane was "Louie the Louse," which showed up when "Charlie" was in the repair shed. As floatplanes are more delicate to maintain than land planes, it is unsurprising R Area Air Force is out of the game so quickly. However, its absence prevents the Japanese from doing serious reconnaissance of the sea approaches to Guadalcanal. The Japanese do not know about American naval moves, which will have serious implications.

While R Area repairs its aircraft, American Task Force 64 under Rear Adm. Norman Scott, four cruisers and five destroyers, is heading north, protecting the Americal Division as it moves to Guadalcanal. Scott's job is to guard the west and north of the island, in case the Imperial Japanese Navy shows up. Scott intends to develop a Navy night-fighting cruiser doctrine - sadly needed after Savo - and avenge the earlier disaster. Scott knows the Japanese excel in night battle and the US has not fought surface actions since wrecking the Spanish Navy in 1898. In surface battles, the Japanese have sunk eight Allied cruisers and three destroyers without losing a single ship. Scott's plan is to steam his ships in column with destroyers ahead and astern of the cruisers. The tincans will illuminate targets with searchlights as soon as possible after radar contact and hurl torpedoes at the larger enemy ships. Cruisers will open fire when they have a target without awaiting orders, and use floatplanes to illuminate the enemy. Scott exercises his command in these tactics.

However, Scott has made one mistake - his heavy cruisers sport the older SC metric-wave search radars, which are inferior to his light cruisers, Helena and Boise, that have the newer centimetric SG radars. US Navy radio intelligence experts have erroneously told Scott that the Japanese have receivers that can pick up radio emissions on the SC radar frequencies. The Japanese, say this report, can pick up radar transmissions at ranges greater than the American radar can bounce. This would forfeit surprise to the Japanese. Scott orders his ships to shut off SC radars during approach to action and only use SG radars to find the foe. Then he logically hoists his flag on USS San Francisco, which does not have SG radar.

It may be easy 55 years later to flail Scott for dismissing his technology, but the technology was new, not well-proven, and the early sets, both SC and SG, are highly temperamental, often giving out "phantom" contacts.

Scott maneuvers his ships out of range of planes from Rabaul - not aware that Rabaul hasn't got any seaplanes to sortie - and waits for the enemy to appear.

Meanwhile, Hyakutake and his flunkies are trying to set up an army headquarters amid Guadalcanal's stinking jungles, in a valley two miles west of Kokumbona. There is no room for an officer's club or a golf course, but no time to consider those vital amenities of war anyway. Hyakutake learns that the 4th Infantry Regiment has just been annihilated. Worse, the Japanese have only half the supplies they need, have no transportation in the jungles, and many of the men are near death from starvation.

As Hyakutake is briefed on this disaster, he sees survivors of the Bloody Ridge battle staggering back through the jungle. The once-proud Japanese soldiers shuffle along, hair turned dirty brown. Their eyebrows and eyelashes are dropping off, and their teeth are loose. For almost three weeks no one has had a bowel movement, and the men are starved for salt. They drink seawater, which affects their stomachs, giving them more pain.

Hyakutake, gloomy, eats breakfast, and receives more bad news - a report that most of the rice unloaded the night before was stolen by the volunteer coolies, all survivors of Bloody Ridge. "It is my fault for having brought such loyal soldiers to such a miserable lot. May they fill their stomachs with our food and be remade into good soldiers."

The general takes swift action. He radios Rabaul, "Situation of Guadalcanal is far more serious than estimated." He orders headquarters to stop sending troops, and move in more food and ammunition. Unfortunately, the Navy has already sent 293 more men by Tokyo Express.

Hyakutake's operations officer, Col. Masanobu Tsuji, must draw up a new plan. Tsuji is the mastermind who devised the plan that defeated the British in Malaya. The new plan calls for a surprise night attack on Henderson Field from the rear. The 2nd Division will push through the jungle behind Mount Austen while other forces keep the Americans occupied. The main attack will be a two-pronged thrust by 2nd Division, a simultaneous assault. The main body under Gen. Yumio Nasu will turn left and come up the corridor between Bloody Ridge and Lungga Rive, while the right, under Maj. Gen. Kiyotake Kawaguchi, will attack east of the ridge. The attack's success depends on prompt delivery of artillery and ammunition. The Army engineers have been hacking out a 15-mile trail through jungle with hand tools. Log roads now span marshes, camouflage nets hide stretches in the plains, and thick vines bridge ravines. The "Maruyama Trail," named for the commander of 2nd Division, is a tremendous feat of Japanese engineering.

Lt. Gen. Masao Maruyama is a fierce cookie. He tells his 2nd Division, "This is the Decisive Battle between Japan and the United States, a battle in which the rise or fall of the Japanese Empire will be decided. If we do not succeed in the occupation of these islands, no one should expect to return alive."

All of Hyakutake's orders are being sent by two radio stations five miles west of Koilotumaria and at a village called Gurabusu, both near the coast. The Americans know of these posts, and eight Higgins boats under tow, loaded with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines under Lt. Col. Robert E. Hill (these men are from Tulagi) are enroute to attack the position. They arrive piecemeal between 1 a.m. and noon this day. Hill sends Two companies by overnight march to hit Koiltumaria while Company C will deal with Gurabusu at dawn on the 11th.

There are now more SeaBees in Adak than any other theater of war, and they are busy hacking out a major airbase from the tundra, creating kitchens, baths, warehouses, offices, hangars, power lines, and roads, getting one day off a month in a four-month period. They eat from mess kits and sleep wherever they can, hauling tools on their backs where even jeeps cannot travel. The 8th SeaBee Battalion rigs powerlines by bringing in log rafts and erecting poles. Williwaws regularly scatter the hundred-foot logs, forcing crews to comb the beaches for telephone poles to recover strays. Meanwhile, American and Canadian pilots take the air war to the Japanese-held islands of Kiska and Attu, flying in as low as 10 feet off the water.

American and Canadian aircraft destroy dozens of Japanese Rufe seaplanes, sink several ships, and kill more than 100 soldiers during the period. The Japanese hit back with a radio operator who speaks English and calls Americans by name, trying to confuse them. The Americans have no success at destroying the operator's radio shack.

The Germans retaliate for the British shackling of POWs in England by shackling thrice the number of POWs originally bound. 321 officers and 60 enlisted men at Oflag VIIB are placed in handcuffs, including large numbers of Canadians and New Zealanders. The camp leader at Oflag VIIB reports to the Swiss government that the treatment is "having serious effects on mental and physical health."

Sumner Welles, the US Deputy Secretary of State, warns that Nazi agents are infesting Argentina and Chile. Both nations protest this speech vigorously.