“Anyway, General Forrest told me a story about the British being in possession of a coding machine…”
The Enigma machine. I can’t believe Forrest told him about that, either.
“… which permitted them to decode certain German codes…”
I’ll be damned, he did!
“… and that one of the German messages intercepted and decoded was the order from Berlin to the Luftwaffe to destroy Coventry,” Vandegrift went on. “Which posed to Prime Minister Churchill the difficult question, ‘Do I order the Royal Air Force to prepare to defend Coventry? Which will probably save Coventry, and a large number of human lives, civilian lives. But which will also certainly let the Germans know we have access to their encoded material. Or do I let them destroy Coventry and preserve the secret that we are reading their top-secret operational orders?’ ”
“I’m familiar with the story, Sir.”
“Yes, I thought you might be,” Vandegrift said. “Coventry, you will recall, was leveled by the Luftwaffe, with a terrible loss of life. I presume the English are still reading German operational orders, and that the Germans do not suspect that they are.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I believe Churchill made the correct decision. Do I make my point, Major?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I will not inquire into the source of your intelligence, nor will I act upon anything you tell me.”
“Yes, Sir,” Banning said.
“Go on, please, Major,” Vandegrift said.
“Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutaka has assumed command of Japanese operations on Guadalcanal,” Banning said.
Hyakutaka commanded the Japanese Seventeenth Army.
Vandegrift looked surprised.
“I was about to say, I know that. But you mean he’s here, don’t you? Physically present on Guadalcanal?”
“Yes, Sir. He arrived 9 October.”
“He’s a good man,” Vandegrift said, almost to himself. It was not an opinion of Hyakutaka’s character. Rather, it was one professional officer’s judgment of the professional skill of another.
“Sir, would it be a waste of your time if I recapped the situation as I understand it?”
“No,” Vandegrift said. “Go ahead.”
“It is our belief, Sir, that until very recently, neither the Japanese Imperial General Staff itself, nor the Army General Staff, nor the Japanese Navy, has taken seriously our position on Guadalcanal. This is almost certainly because of a nearly incredible lack of communication between their Army and their Navy. For example, Sir, we have learned that until we landed, the Japanese Army was not aware that their Navy was building an airfield here.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Vandegrift said. “But on the other hand, sometimes our Army doesn’t talk to our Navy, either.”
“As bad as that gets, Sir, it’s nothing like the Japanese,” Banning said. “Neither, Sir, was the Japanese Army made aware of the extent of Japanese Navy losses at Midway, not until about two weeks ago. Because they presumed that their Naval losses there were negligible, the Japanese Army concluded that we would not be able to launch any sort of counter-offensive until the latter half of 1943.”
“And then we landed here,” Vandegrift said.
“Yes, Sir. And even when we did, they were unwilling or unable to believe that it was anything more than a large-scale raid. The Makin Island raid times ten, or times twenty, so to speak. This misconception was reinforced when Admiral Fletcher elected to withdraw the invasion fleet earlier than was anticipated.”
“Admiral Fletcher,” Vandegrift said evenly, “apparently believed that he could not justify the loss of his ships in a Japanese counterattack.”
“The Japanese interpretation, Sir, was that following the Battle of Savo Island, and our loss of the cruisers Vincennes and Quincy-”
“And the Australian Canberra…”
“-and the Canberra, that the Marines were abandoned here.”
“There were people here who thought the same thing,” Vandegrift said.
“Yes, Sir,” Banning said. “General Pickering among them.”
“Go on, Banning.”
“And then Japanese intelligence, as reported to and accepted by the Imperial General Staff, was faulty,” Banning said. “Remarkably so. Their estimate of Marines ashore was two thousand men, for instance. And they claimed our morale was low, and that deserters were attempting to escape to Tulagi.”
“Really?” Vandegrift asked. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“Based, apparently, on this flawed intelligence, the IJGS made the decision that recapture of Guadalcanal would not be difficult. And because the airfield would be of value to them when they completed it, they decided that the recapture should be undertaken without delay. Initially, in other words, they didn’t consider the possibility that we had the capability to make the airfield operational.”