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8. The Battle of Bloody Ridge
- University Press of Mississippi
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3 ] The Battle of Bloody Ridge At the ridge overlooking the airfield, Col. Edson prepared his men for the impending payoff battle. Bald,but for itskunai grass, nameless, and bumpy, the ridge rose like a long, thin island from the dark green sea of the jungle. It laya short mile south of the airfield, sloping toward the Lunga River to the west and the Tenaru to the east. Deep, heavilywooded ravines surrounded the ridge on all sides. It was an ideal approach to the airstrip. Whoever held the ridge commanded Henderson Field.Whoever held the airfield, held Guadalcanal. Edson's disposition placed his two parachute companies on the exposed left flank and tied them in with Raider B Company, which held the ridge knoll in the center of the Marine line. C Company Raiders extended down the west slope of the ridge in contact with the pioneers, who would guard this jungleflank.Raider A Company, on a high knoll to the north and to the rear of B Company, was Edson's reserve. An increment of the ist Pioneer Battalion was holding a hill overlooking the west bank of the Lunga well to the right of C Company Raiders,and elements of the ist Engineer Battalion were on another hill, to the left of the ist Parachute Battalion. Edson faced a tough decision as to how best to deploy his small force of raiders and para-Marines to defend the ridgeline. He decided on the strategy of individual units of about platoon strength disposed at intervals along the main line of resistance. There were open fields of fire only in the center of the positions where the main line of resistance crossed the [102; The Battle of Bloody Ridge [ 163 Map ofEdson's Bloody Ridge. Courtesy of the Marine Corps Historical Center. [44.200.191.146] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:47 GMT) [ 164] Guadalcanal grassy ridge, but even there the abrupt slopes and broken ground made coordination of fires difficult. In the last hours of daylight, the troops improved their foxholes and their fields of fire, but the resulting positions were neither continuous nor complete. As darkness fell on the ridge above Henderson Field, Col. Edson's men weredead tired, and their strength was300men in foxholes along the ridge. Behind them was Gen.Vandegrift's forward command post, and behind that was the division reserve of a battalion of the 5th Marines and the artillerymen from the 5thBattalion, nth Marines, with their guns sighted in on the crest ofthe ridge and the Japanese positions to the south. Beyondallthe Marines layHenderson Field, the prize the Japanese had vowedto capture and the Marines to defend. As the exhausted Marines on Guadalcanal were sweating it out, a Japanese naval task from Adm. Yamamoto's combined fleet was moving into position to launch a major attack. Shortly after 2200 hours on September 12, Guadalcanal night was lit up with ghoulish green flares as the Japanese warship began their bombardment. But on this night the airfield was not the prime target. Gen. Kawaguchi had radioed to Rabaul a description of the Marines disposition, and the bombardment unit opened up on the ridge wherethe Marineswere. Anyone who was on the hill overlooking the west bank of the Lunga (soon to be called Pioneer Ridge) that night will never forget the pounding wetook from the Japanesewarships. Shortly after 2200, the night's pitch darkness wastransformed into the brightness ofday. The Japanese warships had turned their searchlights on the ridge, sweeping the area with bluish-white lights that seemed considerably brighter than they were. The searchlights were actually the eyes of a mighty enemy naval armada that swept into Sealark Channel to deliver the promised final knockout punch. Soon the men hunkered down on the ridge heard the sound of navalgunfire, sawthe gun flashes offshore, and heard the sigh of the shells, a swoosh-swoosh-swoosh sound, rather like a steam The Battle of Bloody Ridge [ 165 ] CapĂ. Donald L. Dickson said of this watercolor, "I wanted to catch on paper the feeling one has as a big shell comes whistling over. There is a sense of being alone, naked, and unprotected and time seems Endless until it strikes somewhere." Painting by Donald L Dickson. Courtesy of the Marine Corps Historical Center. locomotive straining to climb a steep hill. The shells came whizzing by,bursting near us. Some Marines on the ridge nearly panicked. The huge shells detonated with ear-splitting metallic cracking sounds. The concussion...