Knowing that the attack was coming, Basilone fortified the pass Leonidas-style, only instead of relying on spears and shields he set up barbed wire fences and full-auto tripod-mounted .30-caliber machine guns. He didn't have to wait long after digging in. In the middle of the night of October 24, 1942, the full-on frontal attack of balls-out Japanese infantrymen came blitzing through the ankle-deep mud and driving rain. As a fearsome horde of screaming, bayonet-waving Japanese soldiers rushed towards Henderson Field looking to bury the U.S. base in a pile of American corpses, mortars, artillery, and hand grenades poured into the heavily-outnumbered American positions. Basilone knew some serious shit was about to go down.

The Marines fought bravely against the onslaught, but the Japanese human wave attacks never stopped, never relented, and for the next 72 hours, day and night, there wasn't a minute of their lives that wasn't haunted by a screaming Japanese dude stuffing a blade in their mugs or zinging bullets into the American sandbags. Basilone, however, wasn't going to fucking budge. For three three days and nights, without food or sleep in a marathon of carnage that can only be referred to as "Jack Bauerian", Basilone lugged a giant-ass 100-pound Browning heavy machine gun from position to position, constantly re-adjusting his fields of fire and constantly making sure that everything in front of his position was coated in a thick hail of tracer fire and crunchy lead death. When one of his squad's three operational machine guns jammed up from caked-on mud, overheating, or having the trigger lever worn out from extended bouts of cap-busting, Basilone worked his nuts off to clear the weapon and get it operational as soon as possible. When taking the time to pop open the firing mechanism wasn't practical because of all the pissed-off soldiers trying to put rifle rounds into his brain from point-blank range, Basilone dropped the gun, pulled the .45 from his waistband, and opened fire on the attackers with his pistol, sometimes from distances of less than ten feet. At one point he was down to just two survivors in his squad – one of which was now missing a hand – yet he still continued to fight relentlessly against all odds. Not even something as daunting as, you know, not having ammo and being almost completely overrun by enemies could stop this crazy one-man abattoir from IDKFA-ing his way through the enemy at every possible turn – at one point he fought his way through enemy with only his Colt M1911, got back to the airbase, and fought his way back to his squad with enough ammo to keep his guns fully-operational. By the time the sun rose on the fourth day, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone's machine gun crew had just three men standing. They had burned through 125 belts of ammunition. The entire Japanese regiment was annihilated.