Reinforcing Hanna’s cannoneers became the next order of business. Devereux felt compelled to keep Peale’s Battery B intact to deal with surface threats, and Battery E (which, by that point, had a full complement of guns and crews along with the only heightfinder and director) to deal with enemy planes. That left Godbold’s Battery D, which by that point possessed only two operational guns and no fire-control gear. Devereux directed Godbold to send one section (nine men) to the battalion command post to reinforce Hanna’s crew. Under Corporal Leon A. Graves, the squad clambered on board a contractor’s truck and reached the command post about 0315. They were to proceed along the road that paralleled the shoreline to a junction some 600 yards south of the airfield, where they were to leave the truck and proceed through the brush to Hanna’s position. Quickly, they set out into the night. The flames from the wrecked _Patrol Boat No. 33_ disclosed Japanese troops advancing past the west end of the airstrip into the thick undergrowth in front of the mobile reserve’s positions. Poindexter, after ordering one machine gun section to keep up a fire into the brush to interdict that movement and protect his own flank, heard machine gun fire from Camp 1, behind him. Wanting to see for himself if more Japanese landing craft were coming ashore to his rear, the lieutenant, accompanied by his runner, left the front in charge of Sergeant “QT” Wade, and hurried back to the camp. There, unable to see at what his neophyte sailor-gunners were expending their ammunition, Poindexter asked each to point out his target. Two could not--they’d opened fire only because the other two had done so--but a third pointed to the dim outline of what appeared to be a “large landing barge on the order of a self-propelled artillery lighter.” When another craft of the same type seemed to materialize out of the murk, Poindexter ordered firing resumed at what proved to be two large landing craft that were attempting to ground themselves 1,200 yards east of the entrance to Wilkes Channel.