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BACK FROM GUADAL

The "Hell Hole"—Was All You Read About and More

PFC Morris I Kaufman, son of Sam Kaufman, 214 First Street South, is authority for that statement.

And Kaufman should know. He spent 45 straight days with his helmet and clothes on in mucky foxholes on the front line during those dark October and November days when the fate of Henderson Field and the island “hung by a thread.”

Wounded and nearly dead from malaria, Kaufman was evacuated from Guadalcanal in December and was just released from an Army hospital for a 30-day sick leave at home.

He’s a trench mortar gunner with the 164th infantry, Third Battalion, Company L., the first Army troops to reinforce the battered, heroic Marines, the outfit landing October 13 under cover of a Marine division.

The Japs gave them a hearty welcome.

In the first 13 days they were on the island, they were shelled from land and sea and bombed from the air 36 times.

“It wasn’t funny once,” Kaufman recalls.

Grim Days Recalled 

He relates how he had hardly landed on Guadalcanal when a piece of shell hit his helmet, giving him a good sized head bump which remained elevated for weeks.

“Those were grim days,” Kaufman tells. “You fought for your life, every man for himself. If the Japs weren't coming at you from the front or sides they were potting at you from the trees and you were potting right back at them.”

He relates how a Hibbing fellow, whose name escapes him, killed four Japs the first night in the front line.

Two crackerjack machinegunners “who killed lots of Japs” were Bill Ojala, Ely, and Everett Haultman, Eveleth, Kaufman reports. 

One bright spot in the bloody picture was the Jap nicknamed “Washing Machine Charley” who came over every night for a long stretch at 2 o’clock and, when he didn’t have bombs, dropped old washing machines and sewing machines “and any other thing he could lay his hands on.”

Another Jap character the Guadalcanal boys will never forget is “Pistol Pete,” who operated a four-inch gun up in the mountains and would shell the Yanks at infrequent intervals, “just enough to make life miserable and scare us half to death,” Kaufman says.

The night of October 26 was a nightmare, for that was when the Japs made their last big effort to recapture vital Henderson Field. When it was all over the Yanks buried 941 Japs.

Some Experience 

“There was malaria, heat, dysentery, mosquitoes and JAPS, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Kaufman says.

The men often fought in terrific downpours, and there were stretches as long as three days when they got no food or water, battle conditions making it impossible, he recalls.

One night when the trench mortar shells were coming over thick and fast, Kaufman found an old Marine mattress and pulled it over him.

Left: Morris Isidor Kaufman in Army dress uniform, Fort Snelling, May 9th, 1941. Above: Kaufman, circa June - December, 1941. Photos courtesy of Gary and Harvey Milavetz.

“If I hadn’t had that mattress, I wouldn’t be here now talking to you,” he said. “When the shelling finished we could see where shrapnel had ripped the top and part of it was burned away.”

As for sleep, well, during those October days, no one got much, if any. The fellows had to keep in their positions day and night on end with little food, little water, little sleep, ragged uniforms, dead, wounded and disease all around.

“Hell it was,” Kaufman recalls.

“The Japs kept charging,” he tells, “and there was plenty of bayonet fighting. I’m a trench mortar gunner and have no bayonet, so all I could do was pot away with my service revolver. I saw plenty of Japs and shot at plenty of them. I probably killed some.”

Kaufman reports that the Third Battalion never retreated an inch and won high praise from the Marines.

Terrible Fighting 

“We were in some terrible fighting under fierce conditions and we received high commendation from the Marines,” Kaufman says. “Some of the hardest fighting on the island took place after the Army landed, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Kaufman wears three ribbons, one with two stars in it (he lost one) indicating major battles. The ribbon with the stars indicates three major battles in the Southwest Pacific, another represents service in American combat zones, the third the fact that he was in the service a year before Pearl Harbor. It will be remembered that he was one of the first Virginians to be drafted and he already wears two gold stripes on his arm indicating a total of 12 months overseas duty. His record has been lost, so when it is reestablished he will have additional gold wound stripes to wear on the other arm.

Kaufman has really gotten around since he entered the service, points of call including Australia, New Caledonia, Guadalcanal, New Hebrides and New Zealand.

Likes New Zealand 

“Auckland, New Zealand, what a spot,” he fondly recalls.

“There’s the place with a future. And do they have pretty girls down there!”

Aside from Guadalcanal, Kaufman was in another tight spot, when the Yanks took over New Caledonia—during the days when the Coral Sea battle was raging.

“We expected anything those days,” he says.

The Virginian met a general, too, on his travels. One night while on sentry duty in New Caledonia General Patch strolled up and questioned him on where he was from, how he liked Army life, and numerous personal and impersonal things.

“That was quite an experience for a private,” he recalls.

The perilous October days on Guadalcanal were made doubly difficult by the fact that there was little American plane protection due to a shortage of gas.

Grassy Knoll Bloody 

At one time there was only two and one-half hours flying time of gas remaining no the island, Kaufman recalls. (This information is substantiated by previous newspaper articles.)

Kaufman fought in the big battle for Henderson Field, in an offensive on the south end of the island, and in the bloody Grassy Knoll struggle.

“The Japs really raised hell with us there,” he says.

It was at Grassy Knoll that Joe Shuster, Aurora, was killed.

“We had just laid down a barrage, pumping shells like fury at the enemy when Shuster was killed,” Kaufman related. “Shuster was in the attacking infantry when a bullet got him. He was one of my closest friends in the Army, both of us having gone through training together.”

James Prettyman of International Falls, former Virginia Junior College student, once volunteered to take one of the few captured Japs back to camp. “He took the belt out of his pants, fastened it around the Jap and dragged him all the way to camp,” Kaufman recalls.

Haultman, of Eveleth, once called Kaufman to look at a Jap he had machinegunned. They counted 20 bullet holes in the fallen foe who had attempted to wipe out the Yank gun post.

A purse which Kaufman took from a dead Jap contained, in addition to Jap money, Dutch East India currency, indicating the outfit which the Yanks were fighting had seen service in the conquest of the Dutch possession. Among Kaufman’s souvenirs are a high Jap officer’s saber chain and a Jap lieutenant’s watch chain. 

Virginia Daily Enterprise—Friday, April 9, 1943

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