"RETREAT HELL. WE JUST GOT HERE."

Blog number forty the three                                                        Sep. 25, 2006

"Private Moon, the guy who won all the money on the ship, was holding one of the point positions with a couple of his buddies.  He called in and said, "This is the big one, they're really coming, and they seem to be all around."  They used a rice paddy and not only had machine guns but mortars loaded on rafts in the water.  They could move the raft quickly, and they'd fire a burst then move real quickly so when we returned fire, it wasn't there.

"They came near Moon's point and he would kill three or four of them who tried to take it.  The enemy determined they would try to take that point before anything else.  It was kind of fortunate they did since it bought us a whole lot of time until daylight came.  The Japanese started to maneuver to get the three guys in that hole and finally killed two of them.  Moon was there alone but well supplied with a Tommy gun and clip after clip of ammunition and grenades.

"We could hear exchanges; some of the Japanese spoke English and would yell at him.  He knew he should be quiet so they couldn't really zero in on him but he really meant business and called them all the names in the world.  He kept yelling, 'Come and get me!  If you want me, come and get me.  ' As he fought on, Moon called back coordinates of some enemy positions and GI mortars blasted these targets.

Joe Hoffrichter, having completed his assignment in support of the M-8, located his unit, Company F under Paul Austin.  Hoffrichter shared a foxhole with Troy Stoneburner who awakened him from a sound sleep as gunfire shattered the silence in the G Company sector.

"It went on for hours," says Hoffrichter.  "Suddenly the firing stopped.  We could hear clearly an American GI cussing and taunting the Japanese to come and get him.  There would be a short burst of fire, then more cussing at the Japanese.  At one point Troy said it look like the fellow doing the cussing was out of his foxhole, firing bursts from an automatic gun.  'No way,' I said.  Soon Troy poked me and told me to look toward the beach between two clumps of trees.  I located the spot and silhouetted against the open background, a man was standing, firing a gun in rapid bursts.  We were both convinced this was the nut doing all the cussing and shouting.

:About 4;00 A.M. a major shootout took place in G Company's area and then it grew silent.  Early the next morning, we learned that they had repulsed a night attack and that a kid named Pvt. Harold Moon had killed countless Japanese within a few feet of his foxhole before he was overrun and killed.  [Remnants of Moon's platoon broke the enemy line with a fixed bayonet charge.]

"As we moved up the road at daybreak, I saw a lot of dead Japanese and one dead American soldier.  Before they covered his face with a pancho I saw his face.  It was the same kid who winked at me on the beach and said, "Give 'em hell, Buddy" and it was Harold Moon!

"Moon had fought by himself at the roadblock for an hour, an hour and a half," says Austin.  "He took all the ammunition his buddies had left lying around and with his Thompson machine gun and a box of grenades he had fought those Japs until they finally gathered in a large group, knocked him down and killed him.  That morning there were fifty-five Jap bodies all lying in front of his foxhole.

Harold Moon was awarded a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.

Excerpt  from "Crisis In The Pacific" by Gerald Astor