Solomons:Three Days

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.

"It is curious how this feeling communicated itself. Except for the hard knot which is inside some men, courage is largely the desire to show other men that you have it. And so, in a large group, when a majority have somehow signaled to each other a willingness to quit acting, it is very hard indeed not to quit. The only way to avoid it is to be put to shame by a small group of men to whom this acting is life itself, and who refuse to quit; or by a naturally courageous man doing a brave deed. It was at this moment that Charles Alfred Rigaud, the boy with tired circles under his eyes, showed himself to be a good officer and grown man. Despite snipers all around us, despite the machine guns and the mortar fire, he stood right up on his feet and shouted out: 'Who in Christ's name gave that order?'"

Hersey was curious to know what these tired, hungry, hard-worked Marines thought about war. "They did not want that valley or any part of its jungle" and yet they willingly went down into it. So he asked what they were fighting for. "They did not answer for what seemed a very long time. Then one of them spoke . . . and for a second I thought he was changing the subject or making fun of me, but ... he was answering my question very specifically. He whispered: 'Jesus, what I'd give for a piece of blueberry pie.' . . . Here pie was their symbol of home."

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