Solomons: Three Days
INTO THE VALLEY—John Hersey—Knopf ($2).
The Marines who kept trickling home from Guadalcanal last week found three books about themselves in the stalls. Richard Tregaskis' Guadalcanal Diary (TiME, Jan. 25) and Ira Wolfert's Battle for the Solomons tell of whole campaigns. John Hersey's unpretentious little book tells of just three days—three days when, as a TIME correspondent, tall, 28-year-old Hersey went along on a skirmish with the men of Marine Captain Charles Rigaud.
He calls this expedition into a sniper-infested valley "just an episode in an insignificant battle" (the Marines won the battle, though not this particular skirmish). It "illustrated how war feels to men everywhere. The terrain, the weapons and the races of war vary, but certainly never the sensations . .. for they are as universal as those of love."
Big Lieut. Colonel Julian (The Bull Moose) Frisbie said as they started their hike across the ridges: " 'Have you ever seen men killed on the field of battle?' 'No, the only dead people I've ever seen were drowned.' 'Well,' he said, 'you'll probably see some out of this push. . . . It's a pathetic sight. You'll see. They look just like dirty-faced little boys who have gone to bed without being tucked in by their mothers. . . .'
"Now for the first time I moved with a well-defined sense of hazard. The others, who knew more, had probably felt it all along. . . . You were on the receiving end, and you could not see the thing about to strike you. A few feet farther along I got the shock for which I thought I had braced myself. . . . Just beyond the turn lay a dead Marine. . . . Colonel Frisbie . . . was right."
Approaching the enemy through the jungle, ominous enough in peace, multiplies nerve tension: "Tiny noises became exaggerated in our minds. Drops of accumulated drizzle would crash down onto fallen leaves like heavy footfalls. The click of a canteen cover belonging to one of our own men at some point where the trail doubled back beyond a screen of jungle sounded like a whole machine gun being set up."
The valley, once penetrated, had to be abandoned. The Japs had the Marines at the mercy of well-placed mortars and the Marines could not bring their machine guns to bear. Before the order came to withdraw, the Marines were near panic: "This was a distressing sight, and though I myself was more than eager to be away from that spot, I had a helpless desire to do something to stop the flight. ... I couldn't do anything about it because I was caught up in the general feeling.