8 August

By the end of the second day during the Battle of Guadalcanal, the confusion began to straighten itself out for the Marines. The airfield was captured, and one by one, the units straggled in from the jungle and Kunai grass to form an organized perimeter around it. Meanwhile, the Japanese began to fight back against the Marines. Planes flying in from bases to the northeast attacked the US Marine and Navy convoy and set fire to one transport ship. Japanese warships were also fast approaching the island. On the night of 9 August 1942, they slipped unnoticed into the middle of the US Navy warships. They fired salvo after salvo, and for thirteen minutes, the channel lit up with flashes and echoed with explosions.

The silence that followed lasted until dawn, when the Japanese ships slipped away as suddenly as they had come into contact with their foe. Behind them, the Japanese left one Australian and four US cruisers sunk or severely damaged. The following morning, the US Navy weighed anchor, limped out of the channel, and disappeared to the south. They had planned to leave even before the Japanese attack begun, as fuel had run low for the carrier planes, but the defeat probably hastened their departure. Around the thin perimeter, the Marines prepared themselves for whatever was to come their way. In places they had to leave huge gaps in the line because there were not enough Marines to keep it solid.

Nor was there enough food. The abrupt departure of the US Navy had left little behind for the Marines. However, they found stores of rice and canned fish in the captured thatched shacks on the airfield. These were cooked up into a variety of impromptu dishes, to go occasionally with a rare can of American beans, hash, or Vienna sausage. There was also a herd of cattle wandering around the fields which had been owned by the planters inhibiting the island. These animals were eyed hungrily by the Marines, who snuck off every so often to bring back to their platoon slabs of lean steak. Before long, the medical corps put a stop to this, declaring the cattle to be tubercular. One dark night, the cattle wandered between two units of Marines which, thinking the animals were the enemy, opened up on each other in a whizzing burst of fire. The exchange of fire ended only when the startled animals were heard to clump off in panic.

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