The expected enemy convoy had gotten through and Japanese transports and landing craft were everywhere near Tassafaronga. At sea the escorting cruisers and destroyers provided a formidable antiaircraft screen. Every American plane that could fly did. General Geiger’s aide, Major Jack Cram, took off in the general’s PBY, hastily rigged to carry two torpedoes, and put one of them into the side of an enemy transport as it was unloading. He landed the lumbering flying boat with enemy aircraft hot on his tail. A new squadron of F4Fs, VMF-212, commanded by Major Harold W. Bauer, flew in during the day’s action, landed, refueled, and took off to join the fighting. An hour later, Bauer landed again, this time with four enemy bombers to his credit. Bauer, who added to his score of Japanese aircraft kills in later air battles, was subsequently lost in action. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, as were four other Marine pilots of the early Cactus Air Force: Captain Jefferson J. DeBlanc (VMF-112); Captain Joseph J. Foss (VMF-121); Major Robert E. Galer (VMF-224); and Major John L. Smith (VMF-223).
The Japanese had landed more than enough troops to destroy the Marine beachhead and seize the airfield. At least General Hyakutake thought so, and he heartily approved General Maruyama’s plan to move most of the _Sendai Division_ through the jungle, out of sight and out of contact with the Marines, to strike from the south in the vicinity of Edson’s Ridge. Roughly 7,000 men, each carrying a mortar or artillery shell, started the trek along the Maruyama Trail which had been partially hacked out of the jungle well inland from the Marine positions. Maruyama, who had approved the trail’s name to indicate his confidence, intended to support this attack with heavy mortars and infantry guns (70mm pack howitzers). The men who had to lug, push, and drag these supporting arms over the miles of broken ground, across two major streams, the Mantanikau and the Lunga, and through heavy underbrush, might have had another name for their commander’s path to supposed glory.
[Illustration: _A Marine examines a Japanese 70mm howitzer captured at the Battle of the Tenaru. Gen Maruyama’s troops “had to lug, push, and drag these supporting arms over the miles of broken ground, across two major streams and through heavy underbrush” to get them to the target area--but they never did. The trail behind them was littered with the supplies they carried._