Wanamaker and his buddy, John Blanchard, had their .30 caliber

machine gun mounted on a light tripod, a trick which improved

mobility in the assaults.  Another gun crew set up on the hill to

their front and was cut down almost immediately.  “We had the

gun loaded and were trying to get into some position to fire,

but it was just impossible the way those mortars were falling,”

observed Wanamaker.  

The survivors in Wanamaker’s small area were pinned down and useless.

Men began to pull back. “It was just, ‘Well, what do we do now?’

And I said, ‘Well, let’s get out of here.”   It was dumb to stay there,” he recalled.

Wanamaker’s gun crew was among the last to fall back.  For some

reason they happended to have a lot of smoke grenades.  As Japanese

came around the edge of the hill, the Marines would pitch smoke grenades

 toward them, fire into the smoke and then leapfrog back.  The Japanese

 weren’t attacking in great numbers, mostly separate groups of five or six.

 “They were as scared as we were, “observed Wanamaker. 

 “They were peeking around, looking at us, pointing, trying to fire.”

There was no real organization left. “It was all helter skelter,”

recalled Wanamaker.  “We didn’t have any officers and we only

 had a couple of noncoms.  Nobody really knew where the hell

we were going.  But we got back!