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The blackness of the night was so complete he could not see his buddy just a few feet away. But he could hear the Japanese; 3,000 of them, moving up the hillside in total darkness.
"You heard them coming," Groft, 86, said. "There was no stealth. They were loud. You could hear their officers calling to them and directing them. And we just laid there and waited."
Gripping his 1903 Springfield rifle, the young Marine prayed.
"I prayed that the Lord would give me the faith and courage to do my duty," said Groft, an RCA retiree who lives in Lancaster. "I prayed that if I died, my mother and father and my sisters and brothers would have a good life. Then I was ready for whatever came."
•••
Six days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Groft entered Lancaster's Stahr Armory to enlist in the U.S. Cavalry, just as his father had during the Spanish American War. However, a recruiter told him the Army had only one cavalry unit, and his chances of getting into it were almost nil.
Then Groft saw another recruiter in a fancy, dress-blue uniform, and went to check it out. The recruiter was a U.S. Marine.
"I had no idea what a Marine even did," Groft said.
He enlisted. After boot camp, Groft volunteered for a raider unit being formed by Lt. Col. Merritt A. Edson.
"Edson was a swell man," Groft said.
On Aug. 7, 1942, while the 1st Marine Division was making an uncontested landing on Guadalcanal, Groft and the Raiders had a different reception on the island of Tulagi, 25 miles across the body of water that came to be known as Iron Bottom Sound because of all the ships that would be sunk there.
"We were fired on when we hit the beach," Groft said. "In fact, there was no beach. You dropped right off the Higgins boat into water up to your neck. As I saw people ahead of me going under, I thought, 'Did I come 9,000 miles just to drown?' "
He made it ashore and spent the next three days in hard fighting.
On the night of Aug. 8, from a hilltop, Groft had a ringside seat as Japanese ships slipped into Iron Bottom Sound and gave the U.S. Navy a shellacking, sinking five Allied cruisers without the loss of a single ship.
"I thought it was oddly attractive," Groft said of the Battle of Savo Island. "There was an awful lot of firing going on, and you could almost see those hot shells passing back and forth. It was quite a show."
After the Savo Island defeat, the Navy fled. So did the freighters, whose holds still bulged with supplies the Marines on shore desperately needed.
"The Navy left us," Groft said. "We had nothing to eat; we landed with only three days' rations. We ate every coconut on the island. I remember walking around, kicking empty shells to see if there was anything inside."
When the Navy finally returned, the raiders were ferried to Guadalcanal to help defend Henderson airfield. Knowing the enemy was approaching, Edson manned a ridge 1,700 yards south of the airfield.
•••
The Japanese came screaming out of the darkness and into a blaze of weapons fire.
"It was pretty nasty," Groft said. "When you fired, the distance was just 6 inches (from the Japanese)."
There was "body contact," Groft remembered, and the war became very personal.
"The only thing on your mind is survival," he said.
The close-up fight ended by daylight, and the sun revealed a hellish scene of bodies — Japanese and American — strewn across the landscape. Knowing the enemy would return with the night, Edson pulled his remaining men back to the ridge's highest point, Hill 123.
As predicted, the Japanese returned, but this time they ran into a wall of American artillery fire.
"I thought the artillery was going to kill us," Groft said. "It was coming in on our heads. In front of me, all I could see was explosions. I don't think I even saw a (Japanese) the second night. Just explosions. That's what saved us. I think they would have run right through us."
The Japanese had enough. Leaving 850 of their dead behind, they melted into the jungle. About 104 of the 800 Raiders had been killed or wounded as well.
Walking off the ridge at the end of the fight, Groft said he "was dazed."
"I didn't know really what I was doing, and when we walked back off the ridge, I was very emotional," he said. "I fell down on my knees and began to cry. Next thing I know there were guys patting me on the back and lifting me up. It was pretty horrific."
