Contents

First Offensive:
The Marine Campaign
For Guadalcanal

Marines in
World War II
Commemorative Series

By Henry I. Shaw, Jr.

A Marine machine gunner
and his Browning .30-caliber M1917
heavy machine gun stand guard while
1st Marine Division engineers clean up
in the Lunga River. (Department of
Defense [USMC] Photo 588741)

It was from a Boeing B-17 Flying
Fortress such as this that LtCol Merrill
B. Twining and Maj William B.
McKean reconnoitered the Watchtower
target area and discovered the Japanese
building an airfield on Guadalcanal.
(National Archives Photo 80-G-34887)

1

First Offensive: The Marine
Campaign for Guadalcanal

by Henry I. Shaw, Jr.

In the early summer of
1942, intelligence reports
of the construction
of a Japanese
airfield near Lunga
Point on Guadalcanal in the Solomon
Islands triggered a demand for
offensive action in the South Pacific.
The leading offensive advocate in
Washington was Admiral Ernest J.
King, Chief of Naval Operations
(CNO). In the Pacific, his view was
shared by Admiral Chester A.
Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific
Fleet (CinCPac), who had already
proposed sending the 1st Marine
Raider Battalion to Tulagi, an island
20 miles north of Guadalcanal across
Sealark Channel, to destroy a
Japanese seaplane base there.
Although the Battle of the Coral Sea
had forestalled a Japanese amphibious
assault on Port Moresby, the Allied
base of supply in eastern New
Guinea, completion of the Guadalcanal
airfield might signal the beginning
of a renewed enemy advance to
the south and an increased threat to
the lifeline of American aid to New
Zealand and Australia. On 23 July
1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)
in Washington agreed that the line of
communications in the South Pacific
had to be secured. The Japanese
advance had to be stopped. Thus,
Operation Watchtower, the seizure of
Guadalcanal and Tulagi, came into
being.

The islands of the Solomons lie
nestled in the backwaters of the
South Pacific. Spanish fortune-hunters
discovered them in the mid-sixteenth
century, but no European
power foresaw any value in the islands
until Germany sought to expand
its budding colonial empire
more than two centuries later. In
1884, Germany proclaimed a protectorate
over northern New Guinea, the
Bismarck Archipelago, and the
northern Solomons. Great Britain
countered by establishing a protectorate
over the southern Solomons
and by annexing the remainder of
New Guinea. In 1905, the British
crown passed administrative control
over all its territories in the region to
Australia, and the Territory of
Papua, with its capital at Port Moresby,
came into being. Germany’s holdings
in the region fell under the
administrative control of the League
of Nations following World War I,
with the seat of the colonial government
located at Rabaul on New Britain.
The Solomons lay 10 degrees
below the Equator—hot, humid, and
buffeted by torrential rains. The
celebrated adventure novelist, Jack
London, supposedly muttered: “If I
were king, the worst punishment I
could inflict on my enemies would be
to banish them to the Solomons.”

On 23 January 1942, Japanese
forces seized Rabaul and fortified it
extensively. The site provided an excellent
harbor and numerous positions
for airfields. The devastating
enemy carrier and plane losses at the
Battle of Midway (3–6 June 1942) had
caused Imperial General Headquarters
to cancel orders for the invasion
of Midway, New Caledonia, Fiji, and
Samoa, but plans to construct a
major seaplane base at Tulagi went
forward. The location offered one of
the best anchorages in the South Pacific
and it was strategically located:
560 miles from the New Hebrides,
800 miles from New Caledonia, and
1,000 miles from Fiji.

The outposts at Tulagi and
Guadalcanal were the forward evidences
of a sizeable Japanese force in
the region, beginning with the Seventeenth
Army, headquartered at
Rabaul. The enemy’s Eighth Fleet,
Eleventh Air Fleet, and 1st, 7th, 8th,
and 14th Naval Base Forces also were
on New Britain. Beginning on 5 August
1942, Japanese signal intelligence
units began to pick up transmissions
between Noumea on New Caledonia
and Melbourne, Australia. Enemy
analysts concluded that Vice Admiral
Richard L. Ghormley, commanding
the South Pacific Area (ComSoPac),
was signalling a British or Australian
force in preparation for an offensive in
the Solomons or at New Guinea. The
warnings were passed to Japanese
headquarters at Rabaul and Truk, but
were ignored.

THE PACIFIC AREAS

1 AUGUST 1942

The invasion force was indeed on its
way to its targets, Guadalcanal, Tulagi,
and the tiny islets of Gavutu and
Tanambogo close by Tulagi’s shore. The
landing force was composed of Marines;
the covering force and transport
force were U.S. Navy with a reinforcement
of Australian warships. There was
not much mystery to the selection of
the 1st Marine Division to make the
landings. Five U.S. Army divisions were
located in the South and Southwest Pacific:2
three in Australia, the 37th Infantry
in Fiji, and the Americal
Division on New Caledonia. None was
amphibiously trained and all were considered
vital parts of defensive garrisons.
The 1st Marine Division, minus
one of its infantry regiments, had begun
arriving in New Zealand in mid-June
when the division headquarters
and the 5th Marines reached Wellington.
At that time, the rest of the reinforced
division’s major units were
getting ready to embark. The 1st Marines
were at San Francisco, the 1st
Raider Battalion was on New Caledonia,
and the 3d Defense Battalion was
at Pearl Harbor. The 2d Marines of the
2d Marine Division, a unit which
would replace the 1st Division’s 7th
Marines stationed in British Samoa,
was loading out from San Diego. All
three infantry regiments of the landing
force had battalions of artillery attached,
from the 11th Marines, in the
case of the 5th and 1st; the 2d Marines
drew its reinforcing 75mm howitzers
from the 2d Division’s 10th Marines.

The news that his division would
be the landing force for Watchtower
came as a surprise to Major General
Alexander A. Vandegrift, who had
anticipated that the 1st Division
would have six months of training in
the South Pacific before it saw action.
The changeover from administrative
loading of the various units’
supplies to combat loading, where
first-needed equipment, weapons,
ammunition, and rations were positioned
to come off ship first with the
assault troops, occasioned a never-to-be-forgotten
scene on Wellington’s
docks. The combat troops took the
place of civilian stevedores and unloaded
and reloaded the cargo and
passenger vessels in an increasing
round of working parties, often during
rainstorms which hampered the
task, but the job was done. Succeeding
echelons of the division’s forces
all got their share of labor on the
docks as various shipping groups arrived
and the time grew shorter.
General Vandegrift was able to convince
Admiral Ghormley and the
Joint Chiefs that he would not be
able to meet a proposed D-Day of 1
August, but the extended landing
date, 7 August, did little to improve
the situation.

An amphibious operation is a
vastly complicated affair, particularly
when the forces involved are assembled
on short notice from all over the
Pacific. The pressure that Vandegrift
felt was not unique to the landing
force commander. The U.S. Navy’s
ships were the key to success and they
were scarce and invaluable. Although4
the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway
had badly damaged the Japanese
fleet’s offensive capabilities and crippled
its carrier forces, enemy naval
aircraft could fight as well ashore as
afloat and enemy warships were still
numerous and lethal. American losses
at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, and
Midway were considerable, and
Navy admirals were well aware that
the ships they commanded were in
short supply. The day was coming
when America’s shipyards and factories
would fill the seas with warships
of all types, but that day had not arrived
in 1942. Calculated risk was the
name of the game where the Navy
was concerned, and if the risk seemed
too great, the Watchtower landing
force might be a casualty. As it happened,
the Navy never ceased to risk
its ships in the waters of the Solomons,
but the naval lifeline to the
troops ashore stretched mighty thin
at times.

Tactical command of the invasion
force approaching Guadalcanal in
early August was vested in Vice Admiral
Frank J. Fletcher as Expeditionary
Force Commander (Task Force
61). His force consisted of the amphibious
shipping carrying the 1st
Marine Division, under Rear Admiral
Richmond K. Turner, and the
Air Support Force led by Rear Admiral
Leigh Noyes. Admiral Ghormley
contributed land-based air forces
commanded by Rear Admiral John
S. McCain. Fletcher’s support force
consisted of three fleet carriers, the
Saratoga (CV 3), Enterprise (CV 6),
and Wasp (CV 7); the battleship
North Carolina (BB 55), 6 cruisers,
16 destroyers, and 3 oilers. Admiral
Turner’s covering force included five
cruisers and nine destroyers.

[Sidebar (page 3):]

General Alexander A. Vandegrift

A distinguished military analyst once noted that if
titles were awarded in America as they are in England,
the commanding general of Marine Corps
forces at Guadalcanal would be known simply as “Vandegrift
of Guadalcanal.” But America does not bestow
aristocratic titles, and besides, such a formality would not
be in keeping with the soft-spoken, modest demeanor of
Alexander A. Vandegrift.

The man destined to lead the 1st Marine Division in
America’s first ground offensive operation of World War
II was born in 1887 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he
grew up fascinated by his grandfather’s stories of life in the
Confederate Army during the Civil War. It was axiomatic
that young Alexander would settle on a military career.
Commissioned a Marine lieutenant in 1909, Vandegrift
received an early baptism of fire in 1912 during the bombardment,
assault, and capture of Coyotepe in Nicaragua.
Two years later he participated in the capture and occupation
of Vera Cruz. Vandegrift would spend the greater part
of the next decade in Haiti, where he fought Caco bandits,
and served as an inspector of constabulary with the Gendarmerie
d’Haiti. It was in Haiti that he met and was
befriended by Marine Colonel Smedley D. Butler, who
called him “Sunny Jim.” The lessons of these formative years
fighting an elusive enemy in a hostile jungle environment
were not lost upon the young Marine officer.

He spent the next 18 years in various posts and stations
in the United States, along with two tours of China duty
at Peiping and Tientsin. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Vandegrift
was appointed assistant to the Major General Commandant,
and in April 1940 received the single star of a
brigadier general. He was detached to the 1st Marine Division
in November 1941, and in May 1942 sailed for the
South Pacific as commanding general of the first Marine
division ever to leave the United States. On 7 August 1942,
after exhorting his Marines with the reminder that “God
favors the bold and strong of heart,” he led the 1st Marine
Division ashore in the Solomon Islands in the first large-scale
offensive action against the Japanese.

His triumph at Guadalcanal earned General Vandegrift
the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and the praise of a
grateful nation. In July 1943 he took command of I Marine
Amphibious Corps and planned the landing at Empress
Augusta Bay, Bougainville, Northern Solomons, on
1 November 1943. He then was recalled to Washington, to
become the Eighteenth Commandant of the Marine Corps.

On 1 January 1944, as a lieutenant general, Vandegrift
was sworn in as Commandant. On 4 April 1945 he was
promoted to general, and thus became the first Marine
officer on active duty to attain four-star rank.

In the final stages of the war, General Vandegrift directed
an elite force approaching half-a-million men and women,
with its own aviation force. Comparing his Marines
with the Japanese, he noted that the Japanese soldier “was
trained to go to a place, stay there, fight and die. We train
our men to go to a place, fight to win, and to live. I can
assure you, it is a better theory.”

After the war, Vandegrift fought another battle, this time
in the halls of Congress, with the stakes being the survival
of the Marine Corps. His counter-testimony during Congressional
hearings of the spring of 1946 was instrumental
in defeating initial attempts to merge or “unify” the U.S.
Armed Forces. Although his term as Commandant ended
on 31 December 1947, General Vandegrift would live to see
passage of Public Law 416, which preserved the Corps and
its historic mission. His official retirement date of 1 April
1949 ended just over 40 years of service.

General Vandegrift outlived both his wife Mildred and
their only son, Colonel Alexander A. Vandegrift, Jr., who
fought in World War II and Korea. He spent most of his final
years in Delray, Florida. He died on 8 May 1973.—Robert
V. Aquilina

The Landing and August Battles

On board the transports approaching
the Solomons, the Marines were
looking for a tough fight. They knew
little about the targets, even less
about their opponents. Those maps
that were available were poor, constructions
based upon outdated
hydrographic charts and information
provided by former island residents.
While maps based on aerial photographs
had been prepared they were
misplaced by the Navy in Auckland,
New Zealand, and never got to the
Marines at Wellington.

On 17 July, a couple of division
staff officers, Lieutenant Colonel
Merrill B. Twining and Major William
McKean, had been able to join
the crew of a B-17 flying from Port
Moresby on a reconnaissance mission
over Guadalcanal. They reported
what they had seen, and their analysis,
coupled with aerial photographs,
indicated no extensive
defenses along the beaches of
Guadalcanal’s north shore.

GUADALCANAL
TULAGI-GAVUTU
and
Florida Islands

This news was indeed welcome.
The division intelligence officer (G-2),
Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Goettge,
had concluded that about 8,4005
Japanese occupied Guadalcanal and
Tulagi. Admiral Turner’s staff figured
that the Japanese amounted to 7,125
men. Admiral Ghormley’s intelligence
officer pegged the enemy
strength at 3,100—closest to the
3,457 actual total of Japanese troops;
2,571 of these were stationed on
Guadalcanal and were mostly
laborers working on the airfield.

To oppose the Japanese, the Marines
had an overwhelming superiority
of men. At the time, the tables of
organization for a Marine Corps division
indicated a total of 19,514
officers and enlisted men, including
naval medical and engineer (Seabee)
units. Infantry regiments numbered
3,168 and consisted of a headquarters
company, a weapons company,
and three battalions. Each infantry
battalion (933 Marines) was organized
into a headquarters company
(89), a weapons company (273),
and three rifle companies (183). The
artillery regiment had 2,581 officers
and men organized into three 75mm
pack howitzer battalions and one
105mm howitzer battalion. A light
tank battalion, a special weapons
battalion of antiaircraft and antitank
guns, and a parachute battalion added
combat power. An engineer regiment
(2,452 Marines) with battalions
of engineers, pioneers, and Seabees,
provided a hefty combat and service
element. The total was rounded
out by division headquarters battalion’s
headquarters, signal, and military
police companies and the
division’s service troops—service,
motor transport, amphibian tractor,
and medical battalions. For Watchtower,
the 1st Raider Battalion and
the 3d Defense Battalion had been
added to Vandegrift’s command to
provide more infantrymen and much
needed coast defense and antiaircraft
guns and crews.

Unfortunately, the division’s heaviest
ordnance had been left behind in6
New Zealand. Limited ship space and
time meant that the division’s big
guns, a 155mm howitzer battalion,
and all the motor transport battalion’s
two-and-a-half-ton trucks were
not loaded. Colonel Pedro A. del
Valle, commanding the 11th Marines,
was unhappy at the loss of his heavy
howitzers and equally distressed that
essential sound and flash-ranging
equipment necessary for effective
counterbattery fire was left behind.
Also failing to make the cut in the
battle for shipping space, were all
spare clothing, bedding rolls, and
supplies necessary to support the
reinforced division beyond 60 days
of combat. Ten days supply of ammunition
for each of the division’s
weapons remained in New Zealand.

Naval Historical Photographic Collection 880-CF-117-4-63

Enroute to Guadalcanal RAdm Richmond Kelly Turner, commander of the Amphibious
Force, and MajGen Alexander A. Vandegrift, 1st Marine Division commander,
review the Operation Watchtower plan for landings in the Solomon Islands.

In the opinion of the 1st Division’s
historian and a veteran of the landing,
the men on the approaching
transports “thought they’d have a bad
time getting ashore.” They were confident,
certainly, and sure that they
could not be defeated, but most of
the men were entering combat for the
first time. There were combat veteran
officers and noncommissioned
officers (NCOs) throughout the division,
but the majority of the men
were going into their initial battle.
The commanding officer of the 1st
Marines, Colonel Clifton B. Cates,
estimated that 90 percent of his men
had enlisted after Pearl Harbor. The
fabled 1st Marine Division of later
World War II, Korean War, Vietnam
War, and Persian Gulf War fame, the
most highly decorated division in the
U.S. Armed Forces, had not yet established
its reputation.

The convoy of ships, with its outriding
protective screen of carriers,
reached Koro in the Fiji Islands on
26 July. Practice landings did little
more than exercise the transports’
landing craft, since reefs precluded an
actual beach landing. The rendezvous
at Koro did give the senior commanders
a chance to have a
face-to-face meeting. Fletcher,
McCain, Turner, and Vandegrift got
together with Ghormley’s chief of
staff, Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan,
who notified the conferees that
ComSoPac had ordered the 7th Marines
on Samoa to be prepared to embark
on four days notice as a
reinforcement for Watchtower. To
this decidedly good news, Admiral
Fletcher added some bad news. In
view of the threat from enemy land-based
air, he could not “keep the carriers
in the area for more than 48
hours after the landing.” Vandegrift
protested that he needed at least four
days to get the division’s gear ashore,
and Fletcher reluctantly agreed to
keep his carriers at risk another day.

On the 28th the ships sailed from
the Fijis, proceeding as if they were
headed for Australia. At noon on 5
August, the convoy and its escorts
turned north for the Solomons. Undetected
by the Japanese, the assault
force reached its target during the
night of 6–7 August and split into two
landing groups, Transport Division
X-Ray, 15 transports heading for the
north shore of Guadalcanal east of
Lunga Point, and Transport Division
Yoke, eight transports headed for
Tulagi, Gavutu, Tanambogo, and the
nearby Florida Island, which loomed
over the smaller islands.

Vandegrift’s plans for the landings
would put two of his infantry regiments
(Colonel LeRoy P. Hunt’s 5th
Marines and Colonel Cates’ 1st Marines)
ashore on both sides of the
Lunga River prepared to attack inland
to seize the airfield. The 11th
Marines, the 3d Defense Battalion,
and most of the division’s supporting
units would also land near the
Lunga, prepared to exploit the beachhead.
Across the 20 miles of Sealark
Channel, the division’s assistant commander,
Brigadier General William
H. Rupertus, led the assault forces
slated to take Tulagi, Gavutu, and
Tanambogo: the 1st Raider Battalion
(Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson);
the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines
(Lieutenant Colonel Harold E. Rosecrans);
and the 1st Parachute Battalion
(Major Robert H. Williams).
Company A of the 2d Marines would
reconnoiter the nearby shores of
Florida Island and the rest of Colonel
John A. Arthur’s regiment would
stand by in reserve to land where
needed.

As the ships slipped through the7
channels on either side of rugged
Savo Island, which split Sealark near
its western end, heavy clouds and
dense rain blanketed the task force.
Later the moon came out and silhouetted
the islands. On board his
command ship, Vandegrift wrote to
his wife: “Tomorrow morning at
dawn we land in our first major
offensive of the war. Our plans have
been made and God grant that our
judgement has been sound …
whatever happens you’ll know I did
my best. Let us hope that best will
be good enough.”

At 0641 on 7 August, Turner signalled
his ships to “land the landing
force.” Just 28 minutes before, the
heavy cruiser Quincy (CA 39) had
begun shelling the landing beaches at
Guadalcanal. The sun came up that
fateful Friday at 0650, and the first
landing craft carrying assault troops
of the 5th Marines touched down at
0909 on Red Beach. To the men’s surprise
(and relief), no Japanese appeared
to resist the landing. Hunt
immediately moved his assault
troops off the beach and into the surrounding
jungle, waded the steep-banked
Ilu River, and headed for the
enemy airfield. The following 1st
Marines were able to cross the Ilu on
a bridge the engineers had hastily
thrown up with an amphibian tractor
bracing its middle. The silence
was eerie and the absence of opposition
was worrisome to the riflemen.
The Japanese troops, most of whom
were Korean laborers, had fled to the
west, spooked by a week’s B-17 bombardment,
the pre-assault naval gunfire,
and the sight of the ships
offshore. The situation was not the
same across Sealark. The Marines on
Guadalcanal could hear faint rumbles
of a firefight across the waters.

National Archives Photo 80-CF-112-5-3

First Division Marines storm ashore across Guadalcanal’s
beaches on D-Day, 7 August 1942, from the attack transport
Barnett (AP-11) and attack cargo ship Fomalhaut (AK-22). The
invaders were surprised at the lack of enemy opposition.

LANDING ON GUADALCANAL
and Capture of the Airfield
7–8 AUGUST 1942

Photo courtesy of Col James A. Donovan, Jr.

When the 5th Marines entered the jungle from the beachhead,
and had to cross the steep banks of the Ilu River, 1st Marine
Division engineers hastily constructed a bridge supported by
amphibian tractors. Though heavily used, the bridge held up.

The Japanese on Tulagi were special
naval landing force sailors and
they had no intention of giving up
what they held without a vicious, no-surrender
battle. Edson’s men landed
first, following by Rosecrans’ battalion,
hitting Tulagi’s south coast
and moving inland towards the ridge
which ran lengthwise through the island.
The battalions encountered
pockets of resistance in the undergrowth
of the islands thick vegetation
and maneuvered to outflank and
overrun the opposition. The advance
of the Marines was steady but casualties
were frequent. By nightfall, Edson
had reached the former British
residency overlooking Tulagi’s harbor
and dug in for the night across a hill
that overlooked the Japanese final
position, a ravine on the islands
southern tip. The 2d Battalion, 5th
Marines, had driven through to the
northern shore, cleaning its sector of
enemy; Rosecrans moved into position10
to back up the raiders. By the
end of its first day ashore, 2d Battalion
had lost 56 men killed and
wounded; 1st Raider Battalion
casualties were 99 Marines.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 52231

After the battle, almost all palm trees on Gavutu were shorn
of their foliage. Despite naval gunfire and close air support
hitting the enemy emplacements, Japanese opposition from
caves proved to be serious obstacles for attacking Marines.

Throughout the night, the
Japanese swarmed from hillside caves
in four separate attacks, trying to
penetrate the raider lines. They were
unsuccessful and most died in the attempts.
At dawn, the 2d Battalion,
2d Marines, landed to reinforce the
attackers and by the afternoon of 8
August, the mop-up was completed
and the battle for Tulagi was over.

The fight for tiny Gavutu and
Tanambogo, both little more than
small hills rising out of the sea, connected
by a hundred-yard causeway,
was every bit as intense as that on
Tulagi. The area of combat was much
smaller and the opportunities for fire
support from offshore ships and carrier
planes was severely limited once
the Marines had landed. After naval
gunfire from the light cruiser San
Juan (CL 54) and two destroyers, and
a strike by F4F Wildcats flying from
the Wasp, the 1st Parachute Battalion
landed near noon in three waves,
395 men in all, on Gavutu. The
Japanese, secure in cave positions,
opened fire on the second and third
waves, pinning down the first Marines
ashore on the beach. Major
Williams took a bullet in the lungs
and was evacuated; 32 Marines were
killed in the withering enemy fire.
This time, 2d Marines reinforcements
were really needed; the 1st Battalion’s
Company B landed on Gavutu and
attempted to take Tanambogo; the
attackers were driven to ground and
had to pull back to Gavutu.

After a rough night of close-in
fighting with the defenders of both
islands, the 3d Battalion, 2d Marines,
reinforced the men already ashore
and mopped up on each island. The
toll of Marines dead on the three islands
was 144; the wounded numbered
194. The few Japanese who
survived the battles fled to Florida Island,
which had been scouted by the
2d Marines on D-Day and found
clear of the enemy.

The Marines’ landings and the
concentration of shipping in Guadalcanal
waters acted as a magnet to the
Japanese at Rabaul. At Admiral
Ghormley’s headquarters, Tulagi’s radio
was heard on D-Day “frantically
calling for [the] dispatch of surface11
forces to the scene” and designating
transports and carriers as targets for
heavy bombing. The messages were
sent in plain language, emphasizing
the plight of the threatened garrison.
And the enemy response was prompt
and characteristic of the months of
naval air and surface attacks to come.

At 1030 on 7 August, an Australian
coastwatcher hidden in the
hills of the islands north of Guadalcanal
signalled that a Japanese air
strike composed of heavy bombers,
light bombers, and fighters was headed
for the island. Fletcher’s pilots,
whose carriers were positioned 100
miles south of Guadalcanal, jumped
the approaching planes 20 miles
northwest of the landing areas before
they could disrupt the operation. But
the Japanese were not daunted by the
setback; other planes and ships were
enroute to the inviting target.

On 8 August, the Marines consolidated
their positions ashore, seizing
the airfield on Guadalcanal and establishing
a beachhead. Supplies
were being unloaded as fast as landing
craft could make the turnaround
from ship to shore, but the shore12
party was woefully inadequate to
handle the influx of ammunition, rations,
tents, aviation gas, vehicles—all
gear necessary to sustain the Marines.
The beach itself became a
dumpsite. And almost as soon as the
initial supplies were landed, they had
to be moved to positions nearer Kukum
village and Lunga Point within
the planned perimeter. Fortunately,
the lack of Japanese ground opposition
enabled Vandegrift to shift the
supply beaches west to a new
beachhead.

Marine Corps Personal Papers Collection

Immediately after assault troops cleared the beachhead and moved inland, supplies
and equipment, inviting targets for enemy bombers, began to litter the beach.

Japanese bombers did penetrate
the American fighter screen on 8 August.
Dropping their bombs from
20,000 feet or more to escape antiaircraft
fire, the enemy planes were not
very accurate. They concentrated on
the ships in the channel, hitting and
damaging a number of them and
sinking the destroyer Jarvis (DD
393). In their battles to turn back the
attacking planes, the carrier fighter
squadrons lost 21 Wildcats on 7–8
August.

The primary Japanese targets were
the Allied ships. At this time, and for
a thankfully and unbelievably long
time to come, the Japanese commanders
at Rabaul grossly underestimated
the strength of Vandegrift’s
forces. They thought the Marine
landings constituted a reconnaissance
in force, perhaps 2,000 men, on
Guadalcanal. By the evening of 8 August,
Vandegrift had 10,900 troops
ashore on Guadalcanal and another
6,075 on Tulagi. Three infantry regiments
had landed and each had a
supporting 75mm pack howitzer
battalion—the 2d and 3d Battalions,
11th Marines on Guadalcanal, and
the 3d Battalion, 10th Marines on
Tulagi. The 5th Battalion, 11th Marines’
105mm howitzers were in
general support.

That night a cruiser-destroyer
force of the Imperial Japanese Navy
reacted to the American invasion
with a stinging response. Admiral
Turner had positioned three cruiser-destroyer
groups to bar the Tulagi-Guadalcanal
approaches. At the Battle
of Savo, the Japanese demonstrated
their superiority in night fighting
at this stage of the war, shattering
two of Turners covering forces
without loss to themselves. Four
heavy cruisers went to the bottom—three
American, one Australian—and
another lost her bow. As the sun
came up over what soon would be
called “Ironbottom Sound,” Marines
watched grimly as Higgins boats
swarmed out to rescue survivors. Approximately
1,300 sailors died that
night and another 700 suffered
wounds or were badly burned.
Japanese casualties numbered less
than 200 men.

The Japanese suffered damage to
only one ship in the encounter, the
cruiser Chokai. The American cruisers
Vincennes (CA 44), Astoria (CA
34), and Quincy (CA 39) went to the
bottom, as did the Australian Navy’s
HMAS Canberra, so critically
damaged that she had to be sunk by
American torpedoes. Both the cruiser
Chicago (CA 29) and destroyer Talbot
(DD 114) were badly damaged.
Fortunately for the Marines ashore,
the Japanese force—five heavy cruisers,
two light cruisers, and a
destroyer—departed before dawn
without attempting to disrupt the
landing further.

U.S. 105mm Howitzer

When the attack-force leader, Vice
Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, returned
to Rabaul, he expected to receive the
accolades of his superiors. He did get
those, but he also found himself the
subject of criticism. Admiral Isoroku
Yamamoto, the Japanese fleet commander,
chided his subordinate for
failing to attack the transports. Mikawa
could only reply, somewhat lamely,
that he did not know Fletcher’s
aircraft carriers were so far away
from Guadalcanal. Of equal significance
to the Marines on the
beach, the Japanese naval victory
caused celebrating superiors in Tokyo
to allow the event to overshadow the13
importance of the amphibious
operation.

The disaster prompted the American
admirals to reconsider Navy support
for operations ashore. Fletcher
feared for the safety of his carriers;
he had already lost about a quarter
of his fighter aircraft. The commander
of the expeditionary force
had lost a carrier at Coral Sea and
another at Midway. He felt he could
not risk the loss of a third, even if
it meant leaving the Marines on their
own. Before the Japanese cruiser attack,
he obtained Admiral Ghormley’s
permission to withdraw from
the area.

At a conference on board Turner’s
flagship transport, the McCawley,
on the night of 8 August, the admiral
told General Vandegrift that Fletcher’s
impending withdrawal meant
that he would have to pull out the
amphibious force’s ships. The Battle
of Savo Island reinforced the decision
to get away before enemy aircraft,
unchecked by American interceptors,
struck. On 9 August, the transports
withdrew to Noumea. The unloading
of supplies ended abruptly, and
ships still half-full steamed away. The
forces ashore had 17 days’ rations—after
counting captured Japanese
food—and only four days’ supply of
ammunition for all weapons. Not
only did the ships take away the rest
of the supplies, they also took the
Marines still on board, including the
2d Marines’ headquarters element.
Dropped off at the island of Espiritu
Santo in the New Hebrides, the infantry
Marines and their commander,
Colonel Arthur, were most
unhappy and remained so until they
finally reached Guadalcanal on 29
October.

Ashore in the Marine beachheads,
General Vandegrift ordered rations
reduced to two meals a day. The
reduced food intake would last for
six weeks, and the Marines would
become very familiar with Japanese
canned fish and rice. Most of the Marines
smoked and they were soon disgustedly
smoking Japanese-issue
brands. They found that the separate
paper filters that came with the
cigarettes were necessary to keep the
fast-burning tobacco from scorching
their lips. The retreating ships had
also hauled away empty sand bags
and valuable engineer tools. So the
Marines used Japanese shovels to fill
Japanese rice bags with sand to
strengthen their defensive positions.

U.S. 90mm Antiaircraft Gun

The Marines dug in along the
beaches between the Tenaru and the
ridges west of Kukum. A Japanese
counter-landing was a distinct possibility.
Inland of the beaches, defensive
gun pits and foxholes lined the
west bank of the Tenaru and
crowned the hills that faced west
toward the Matanikau River and
Point Cruz. South of the airfield
where densely jungled ridges and ravines
abounded, the beachhead
perimeter was guarded by outposts
and these were manned in large part
by combat support troops. The engineer,
pioneer, and amphibious tractor
battalion all had their positions
on the front line. In fact, any Marine
with a rifle, and that was virtually
every Marine, stood night defensive
duty. There was no place within the
perimeter that could be counted safe
from enemy infiltration.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 150993

Col Kiyono Ichiki, a battle-seasoned
Japanese Army veteran, led his force in
an impetuous and ill-fated attack on
strong Marine positions in the Battle of
the Tenaru on the night of 20–21 August.

Almost as Turner’s transports
sailed away, the Japanese began a
pattern of harassing air attacks on
the beachhead. Sometimes the raids
came during the day, but the 3d
Defense Battalion’s 90mm antiaircraft
guns forced the bombers to fly too
high for effective bombing. The erratic
pattern of bombs, however,
meant that no place was safe near the
airfield, the preferred target, and no
place could claim it was bomb-free.16
The most disturbing aspect of
Japanese air attacks soon became the
nightly harassment by Japanese aircraft
which singly, it seemed, roamed
over the perimeter, dropping bombs
and flares indiscriminately. The
nightly visitors, whose planes’ engines
were soon well known sounds,
won the singular title “Washing
Machine Charlie,” at first, and later,
“Louie the Louse,” when their
presence heralded Japanese shore
bombardment. Technically, “Charlie”
was a twin-engine night bomber
from Rabaul. “Louie” was a cruiser
float plane that signalled to the bombardment
ships. But the harassed
Marines used the names interchangeably.

Even though most of the division’s
heavy engineering equipment had
disappeared with the Navy’s transports,
the resourceful Marines soon
completed the airfield’s runway with
captured Japanese gear. On 12 August
Admiral McCain’s aide piloted
in a PBY-5 Catalina flying boat and
bumped to a halt on what was now
officially Henderson Field, named for
a Marine pilot, Major Lofton R. Henderson,
lost at Midway. The Navy
officer pronounced the airfield fit for
fighter use and took off with a load
of wounded Marines, the first of
2,879 to be evacuated. Henderson
Field was the centerpiece of Vandegrift’s
strategy; he would hold it at
all costs.

Although it was only 2,000 feet
long and lacked a taxiway and adequate
drainage, the tiny airstrip,
often riddled with potholes and rendered17
unusable because of frequent,
torrential downpours, was essential
to the success of the landing force.
With it operational, supplies could
be flown in and wounded flown out.
At least in the Marines’ minds, Navy
ships ceased to be the only lifeline for
the defenders.

While Vandegrift’s Marines dug in
east and west of Henderson Field,
Japanese headquarters in Rabaul
planned what it considered an effective
response to the American offensive.
Misled by intelligence estimates
that the Marines numbered perhaps
2,000 men, Japanese staff officers believed
that a modest force quickly
sent could overwhelm the invaders.

On 12 August, CinCPac determined
that a sizable Japanese force
was massing at Truk to steam to the
Solomons and attempt to eject the
Americans. Ominously, the group included
the heavy carriers Shokaku
and Zuikaku and the light carrier
Ryujo. Despite the painful losses at
Savo Island, the only significant increases
to American naval forces in
the Solomons was the assignment of
a new battleship, the South Dakota
(BB 57).

Imperial General Headquarters in
Tokyo had ordered Lieutenant
General Haruyoshi Hyakutake’s
Seventeenth Army to attack the Marine
perimeter. For his assault force,
Hyakutake chose the 35th Infantry
Brigade (Reinforced), commanded by
Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi.
At the time, Kawaguchi’s main force
was in the Palaus. Hyakutake selected
a crack infantry regiment—the
28th—commanded by Colonel Kiyono
Ichiki to land first. Alerted for its
mission while it was at Guam, the
Ichiki Detachment assault echelon,
one battalion of 900 men, was transported
to the Solomons on the only
shipping available, six destroyers. As
a result the troops carried just small
amounts of ordnance and supplies.
A follow-on echelon of 1,200 of
Ichiki’s troops was to join the assault
battalion on Guadalcanal.

18

National Archives Photo 80-G-37932

On 20 August, the first Marine Corps aircraft such as this F4F Grumman Wildcat
landed on Henderson Field to begin combat air operations against the Japanese.

While the Japanese landing force
was headed for Guadalcanal, the
Japanese already on the island
provided an unpleasant reminder
that they, too, were full of fight. A
captured enemy naval rating, taken
in the constant patrolling to the west
of the perimeter, indicated that a
Japanese group wanted to surrender
near the village of Kokumbona,
seven miles west of the Matanikau.
This was the area that Lieutenant
Colonel Goettge considered held
most of the enemy troops who had
fled the airfield. On the night of 12
August, a reconnaissance patrol of 25
men led by Goettge himself left the
perimeter by landing craft. The
patrol landed near its objective, was
ambushed, and virtually wiped out.
Only three men managed to swim
and wade back to the Marine lines.
The bodies of the other members of
the patrol were never found. To this
day, the fate of the Goettge patrol
continues to intrigue researchers.

After the loss of Goettge and his
men, vigilance increased on the
perimeter. On the 14th, a fabled
character, the coastwatcher Martin
Clemens, came strolling out of the
jungle into the Marine lines. He had
watched the landing from the hills
south of the airfield and now
brought his bodyguard of native
policemen with him. A retired sergeant
major of the British Solomon
Islands Constabulary, Jacob C. Vouza,
volunteered about this time to
search out Japanese to the east of the
perimeter, where patrol sightings and
contacts had indicated the Japanese
might have effected a landing.

The ominous news of Japanese
sightings to the east and west of the
perimeter were balanced out by the
joyous word that more Marines had
landed. This time the Marines were
aviators. On 20 August, two squadrons
of Marine Aircraft Group
(MAG)-23 were launched from the
escort carrier Long Island (CVE-1) located
200 miles southeast of Guadalcanal.
Captain John L. Smith led 19
Grumman F4F-4 Wildcats of Marine
Fighting Squadron (VMF)-223 onto
Henderson’s narrow runway. Smith’s
fighters were followed by Major
Richard C. Mangrum’s Marine Scout-Bombing
Squadron (VMSB)-232
with 12 Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless
dive bombers.

From this point of the campaign,
the radio identification for Guadalcanal,
Cactus, became increasingly
synonymous with the island. The
Marine planes became the first elements
of what would informally be
known as Cactus Air Force.

Wasting no time, the Marine pilots
were soon in action against the
Japanese naval aircraft which frequently
attacked Guadalcanal. Smith
shot down his first enemy Zero fighter
on 21 August; three days later
VMF-223’s Wildcats intercepted a
strong Japanese aerial attack force
and downed 16 enemy planes. In this
action, Captain Marion E. Carl, a
veteran of Midway, shot down three
planes. On the 22d, coastwatchers
alerted Cactus to an approaching air
attack and 13 of 16 enemy bombers
were destroyed. At the same time,
Mangrum’s dive bombers damaged
three enemy destroyer-transports attempting
to reach Guadalcanal. On
24 August, the American attacking
aircraft, which now included Navy
scout-bombers from the Saratoga’s
Scouting Squadron (VS) 5, succeeded
in turning back a Japanese reinforcement
convoy of warships and
destroyers.

On 22 August, five Bell P-400 Air
Cobras of the Army’s 67th Fighter
Squadron had landed at Henderson,
followed within the week by nine20
more Air Cobras. The Army planes,
which had serious altitude and
climb-rate deficiencies, were destined
to see most action in ground combat
support roles.

The frenzied action in what became
known as the Battle of the
Eastern Solomons was matched
ashore. Japanese destroyers had delivered
the vanguard of the Ichiki force
at Taivu Point, 25 miles east of the
Marine perimeter. A long-range
patrol of Marines from Company A,
1st Battalion, 1st Marines ambushed
a sizable Japanese force near Taivu
on 19 August. The Japanese dead
were readily identified as Army
troops and the debris of their defeat
included fresh uniforms and a large
amount of communication gear.
Clearly, a new phase of the fighting
had begun. All Japanese encountered
to this point had been naval troops.

Alerted by patrols, the Marines
now dug in along the Ilu River, often
misnamed the Tenaru on Marine
maps, were ready for Colonel Ichiki.
The Japanese commander’s orders
directed him to “quickly recapture
and maintain the airfield at Guadalcanal,”
and his own directive to his
troops emphasized that they would
fight “to the last breath of the last
man.” And they did.

U.S. M-3 Light Tank

Too full of his mission to wait for
the rest of his regiment and sure that
he faced only a few thousand men
overall, Ichiki marched from Taivu
to the Marines’ lines. Before he attacked
on the night of the 20th, a
bloody figure stumbled out of the
jungle with a warning that the
Japanese were coming. It was Sergeant
Major Vouza. Captured by the
Japanese, who found a small American
flag secreted in his loincloth, he
was tortured in a failed attempt to
gain information on the invasion
force. Tied to a tree, bayonetted twice
through the chest, and beaten with
rifle butts, the resolute Vouza chewed
through his bindings to escape. Taken
to Lieutenant Colonel Edwin A. Pollock,
whose 2d Battalion, 1st Marines
held the Ilu mouth’s defenses,
he gasped a warning that an estimated
250–500 Japanese soldiers were
coming behind him. The resolute
Vouza, rushed immediately to an aid
station and then to the division
hospital, miraculously survived his
ordeal and was awarded a Silver Star
for his heroism by General Vandegrift,
and later a Legion of Merit.
Vandegrift also made Vouza an
honorary sergeant major of U.S.
Marines.

At 0130 on 21 August, Ichiki’s
troops stormed the Marines’ lines in
a screaming, frenzied display of the
“spiritual strength” which they had
been assured would sweep aside their
American enemy. As the Japanese
charged across the sand bar astride
the Ilu’s mouth, Pollock’s Marines cut
them down. After a mortar preparation,
the Japanese tried again to
storm past the sand bar. A section of
37mm guns sprayed the enemy force
with deadly canister. Lieutenant
Colonel Lenard B. Cresswell’s 1st Battalion,
1st Marines moved upstream
on the Ilu at daybreak, waded across
the sluggish, 50-foot-wide stream,
and moved on the flank of the
Japanese. Wildcats from VMF-223
strafed the beleagured enemy force.
Five light tanks blasted the retreating
Japanese. By 1700, as the sun was
setting, the battle ended.

Colonel Ichiki, disgraced in his own
mind by his defeat, burned his
regimental colors and shot himself.
Close to 800 of his men joined him
in death. The few survivors fled eastward
towards Taivu Point. Rear Admiral
Raizo Tanaka, whose
reinforcement force of transports and
destroyers was largely responsible for
the subsequent Japanese troop buildup
on Guadalcanal, recognized that
the unsupported Japanese attack was
sheer folly and reflected that “this
tragedy should have taught us the
hopelessness of bamboo spear tactics.”
Fortunately for the Marines,
Ichiki’s overconfidence was not
unique among Japanese commanders.

Captain Donald L. Dickson, USMCR

Capt Donald L. Dickson said of his watercolor: “I wanted to
catch on paper the feeling one has as a shell comes whistling
over…. There is a sense of being alone, naked and unprotected.
And time seems endless until the shell strikes somewhere.”

Following the 1st Marines’ tangle
with the Ichiki detachment, General
Vandegrift was inspired to write the
Marine Commandant, Lieutenant
General Thomas Holcomb, and
report: “These youngsters are the
darndest people when they get started21
you ever saw.” And all the Marines
on the island, young and old, tyro
and veteran, were becoming accomplished
jungle fighters. They were no
longer “trigger happy” as many had
been in their first days ashore, shooting
at shadows and imagined enemy.
They were waiting for targets,
patrolling with enthusiasm, sure of
themselves. The misnamed Battle of
the Tenaru had cost Colonel Hunt’s
regiment 34 killed in action and 75
wounded. All the division’s Marines
now felt they were bloodied. What
the men on Tulagi, Gavutu, and
Tanambogo and those of the Ilu had
done was prove that the 1st Marine
Division would hold fast to what it
had won.

While the division’s Marines and
sailors had earned a breathing spell
as the Japanese regrouped for
another onslaught, the action in the
air over the Solomons intensified.
Almost every day, Japanese aircraft
arrived around noon to bomb the
perimeter. Marine fighter pilots
found the twin-engine Betty bombers
easy targets; Zero fighters were
another story. Although the Wildcats
were a much sturdier aircraft, the
Japanese Zeros’ superior speed and
better maneuverability gave them a
distinct edge in a dogfight. The
American planes, however, when
warned by the coastwatchers of
Japanese attacks, had time to climb
above the oncoming enemy and
preferably attacked by making firing
runs during high speed dives. Their
tactics made the air space over the
Solomons dangerous for the
Japanese. On 29 August, the carrier
Ryujo launched aircraft for a strike
against the airstrip. Smith’s Wildcats
shot down 16, with a loss of four of
their own. Still, the Japanese continued
to strike at Henderson Field
without letup. Two days after the
Ryujo raid, enemy bombers inflicted
heavy damage on the airfield, setting
aviation fuel ablaze and
incinerating parked aircraft.
VMF-223’s retaliation was a further
bag of 13 attackers.

On 30 August, two more MAG-23
squadrons, VMF-224 and
VMSB-231, flew in to Henderson.
The air reinforcements were more
than welcome. Steady combat attrition,
frequent damage in the air and
on the ground, and scant repair facilities
and parts kept the number of
aircraft available a dwindling
resource.

Plainly, General Vandegrift needed22
infantry reinforcements as much
as he did additional aircraft. He
brought the now-combined raider
and parachute battalions, both under
Edson’s command, and the 2d
Battalion, 5th Marines, over to
Guadalcanal from Tulagi. This gave
the division commander a chance to
order out larger reconnaissance
patrols to probe for the Japanese. On
27 August, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines,
made a shore-to-shore landing
near Kokumbona and marched back
to the beachhead without any measurable
results. If the Japanese were
out there beyond the Matanikau—and
they were—they watched the
Marines and waited for a better opportunity
to attack.

[Sidebar (page 5):]

First Marine Utility Uniform Issued in World War II

The United States Marine Corps entered World War
II wearing essentially the same summer field uniform
that it had worn during the “Banana Wars.”
The Marines defending America’s Pacific outposts on
Guam, Wake Island, and in the Philippines in the late
months of 1941 wore a summer field uniform consisting
of a khaki cotton shirt and trousers, leggings, and a
M1917A1 steel helmet. Plans to change this uniform had
been underway for at least one year prior to the opening
of hostilities.

As had the Army, the Marine Corps had used a loose-fitting
blue denim fatigue uniform for work details and some
field exercises since the 1920s. This fatigue uniform was
either a one-piece coverall or a two-piece bib overall and
jacket, both with “USMC” metal buttons. In June 1940, it
was replaced by a green cotton coverall. This uniform and
the summer field uniform were replaced by what would
become known as the utility uniform. Approved for general
issue on the Marine Corps’ 166th birthday, 10 November
1941, this new uniform was made of sage-green (although
“olive drab” was called for in the specifications) herringbone
twill cotton, then a popular material for civilian work
clothing. The two-piece uniform consisted of a coat (often
referred to as a “jacket” by Marines) and trousers. In 1943,
a cap made of the same material would be issued.

The loose-fitting coat was closed down the front by four
two-piece rivetted bronze-finished steel buttons, each bearing
the words “U.S. MARINE CORPS” in relief. The cuffs
were closed by similar buttons. Two large patch pockets
were sewn on the front skirts of the jacket and a single patch
pocket was stitched to the left breast. This pocket had the
Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor insignia and the
letters “USMC” stencilled on it in black ink. The trousers,
worn with and without the khaki canvas leggings, had two
slashed front pockets and two rear patch pockets.

The new uniform was issued to the flood of new recruits
crowding the recruit depots in the early months of 1942 and
was first worn in combat during the landing on Guadalcanal
in August 1942. This uniform was subsequently worn
by Marines of all arms from the Solomons Campaign to
the end of the war. Originally, the buttons on the coat and
the trousers were all copper-plated, but an emergency alternate
specification was approved on 15 August 1942, eight
days after the landing on Guadalcanal, which allowed for
a variety of finishes on the buttons. Towards the end of
the war, a new “modified” utility uniform which had been
developed after Tarawa was also issued, in addition to a
variety of camouflage uniforms. All of these utility uniforms,
along with Army-designed Ml helmets and Marine
Corps-designed cord and rubber-soled rough-side-out
leather “boondocker” shoes, would be worn throughout the
war in the Pacific, during the postwar years, and into the
Korean War.—Kenneth L. Smith-Christmas

[Sidebar (page 11):]

LVT (1)—The ‘Amtrac’

While the Marine Corps was developing amphibious
warfare doctrine during the 1920s and
1930s, it was apparent that a motorized amphibian
vehicle was needed to transport men and equipment
from ships across fringing reefs and beaches into battle,
particularly when the beach was defended.

In 1940, the Marines adopted the Landing Vehicle,
Tracked (1), designed by Donald Roebling. More commonly
known as the “amtrac” (short for amphibian tractor), the
LVT(1) had a driver’s cab in front and a small engine compartment
in the rear, with the bulk of the body used for
carrying space. During the next three years, 1,225 LVT(1)s
were built, primarily by the Food Machinery Corporation.

The LVT(1) was constructed of welded steel and was
propelled on both land and water by paddle-type treads.
Designed solely as a supply vehicle, it could carry 4,500
pounds of cargo. In August 1942, the LVT(1) first saw combat
on Guadalcanal with the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion,
1st Marine Division. Throughout the Solomon
Islands campaigns, the LVT(1) provided Marines all types
of logistical support, moving thousands of tons of supplies
to the front lines. At times they also were pressed into tactical
use: moving artillery pieces, holding defensive positions,
and occasionally supporting Marines in the attack
with their machine guns. They also were used as pontoons
to support bridges across Guadalcanal rivers.

The LVT proved to be more seaworthy than a boat of
comparable size; it was able to remain afloat with its entire
cargo hold full of water. However, defects in the design
soon became apparent. The paddle treads on the tracks
and the rigid suspension system were both susceptible to
damage when driven on land and did not provide the
desired speeds on land or water. Although the LVT(1) performed
admirably against undefended beachheads, its lack
of armor made it unsuitable for assaults against the heavily
defended islands of the central Pacific. This weakness
was apparent during the fighting in the Solomon Islands,
but LVT(1)s with improvised armor were still in use at the
assault on Tarawa, where 75 percent of them were lost in
three days.

The LVT(1) proved its value and validated the amphibious
vehicle concept through the great versatility and mobility
it demonstrated throughout numerous campaigns in
the Pacific. Although intended solely for supply purposes,
it was thrust into combat use in early war engagements.
In its initial role as a support vehicle, the LVT(1) delivered
ammunition, supplies and reinforcements that made the
difference between victory and defeat.—Second Lieutenant
Wesley L. Feight, USMC

[Sidebar (page 14):]

General Vandegrift and His 1st Marine Division Staff

Whenever a work about the Guadalcanal operation is
published, one of the pictures always included is
that of Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift,
1st Marine Division commanding general, and his staff officers
and commanders, who posed for the photograph on 11 August
1942, just four days after the assault landings on the island.
Besides General Vandegrift, there are 40 Marines and
one naval officer in this picture, and each one deserves a page
of his own in Marine Corps history.

Among the Marines, 23 were promoted to general officer
rank and three became Commandants of the Marine Corps:
General Vandegrift and Colonels Cates and Pate. The naval
officer, division surgeon Commander Warwick T. Brown, MC,
USN, also made flag officer rank while on active duty and
was promoted to vice admiral upon retirement.

Four of the officers in the picture served in three wars. Lieutenant
Colonels Gerald C. Thomas, division operations officer,
and Randolph McC. Pate, division logistics officer, served in
both World Wars I and II, and each commanded the 1st Marine
Division in Korea. Colonel William J. Whaling similarly
served in World Wars I and II, and was General Thomas’ assistant
division commander in Korea. Major Henry W. Buse,
Jr., assistant operations officer, served in World War II, Korea,
and the Vietnam War. Others served in two wars—World
Wars I and II, or World War II and Korea. Represented in the
photograph is a total of nearly 700 years of cumulative experience
on active Marine Corps service.

Three key members of the division—the Assistant Division
Commander, Brigadier General William H. Rupertus; the Assistant
Chief of Staff, G-1, Colonel Robert C. Kilmartin, Jr.;
and the commanding officer of the 1st Raider Battalion, Lieutenant
Colonel Merritt A. Edson—were not in this picture for
a good reason. They were on Tulagi, where Rupertus headed
the Tulagi Command Group with Kilmartin as his chief of
staff, and Edson commanded the combat troops. Also notably
absent from this photograph was the commander of the
7th Marines, Colonel James C. Webb, who had not joined the
division from Samoa, where the regiment had been sent before
the division deployed overseas.

In his memoir, Once a Marine, General Vandegrift explained
why this photograph was taken. The division’s morale was
affected by the fact that Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher was
forced to withdraw his fleet from the area—with many of his
ships not yet fully unloaded and holding more than half of
the division’s supplies still needed ashore. Adding to the Marines’
uneasiness at seeing their naval support disappear below
the horizon, was the fact that they had been under almost
constant enemy air attacks beginning shortly after their landing
on Guadalcanal. In an effort to counter the adverse influence
on morale of the day and night air attacks, Vandegrift
began making tours of the division perimeter every morning
to talk to as many of his Marines as possible, and to keep a
personal eye on the command. As he noted:

By August 11, the full impact of the vanished transports was
permeating the command, so again I called a conference of my
staff and command officers…. I ended the conference by
posing with this fine group of officers, a morale device that
worked because they thought if I went to the trouble of having
the picture taken then I obviously planned to enjoy it in
future years.

Recently, General Merrill B. “Bill” Twining, on Guadalcanal
a lieutenant colonel and assistant D-3, recalled the circumstances
of the photograph and philosophized about the men
who appeared in it:

The group is lined up on the slope of the coral ridge which
provided a degree of protection from naval gunfire coming from
the north and was therefore selected as division CP….

There was no vital reason for the conclave. I think V[andegrift]
just wanted to see who was in his outfit. Do you realize
these people had never been together before? Some came
from as far away as Iceland….

V[andegrift] mainly introduced himself, gave a brief pep talk….
I have often been asked how we could afford to congregate
all this talent in the face of the enemy. We didn’t believe we
(at the moment) faced any threat from the Japanese. The defense
area was small and every responsible commander could reach
his CP in 5 minutes and after all there were a lot of good people
along those lines. Most of the fresh-caught second lieutenants
were battalion commanders two years later. We believed in each
other and trusted.

—Benis M. Frank

The General and His Officers on Guadalcanal, According to the Chart

• 1. Col George R. Rowan
• 2. Col Pedro A. del Valle
• 3. Col William C. James
• 4. MajGen Alexander A. Vandegrift
• 5. LtCol Gerald C. Thomas
• 6. Col Clifton B. Cates
• 7. Col Randolph McC. Pate
• 8. Cdr Warwick T. Brown, USN
• 9. Col William J. Whaling
• 10. Col Frank B. Goettge
• 11. Col LeRoy P. Hunt, Jr.
• 12. LtCol Frederick C. Biebush
• 13. LtCol Edwin A. Pollock
• 14. LtCol Edmund J. Buckley
• 15. LtCol Walter W. Barr
• 16. LtCol Raymond P. Coffman
• 17. LtCol Francis R. Geraci
• 18. LtCol William E. Maxwell
• 19. LtCol Edward G. Hagen
• 20. LtCol William N. McKelvy, Jr.
• 21. LtCol Julian N. Frisbie
• 22. Maj Milton V. O’Connell
• 23. Maj William Chalfant III
• 24. Maj Horace W. Fuller
• 25. Maj Forest C. Thompson
• 26. Maj Robert G. Ballance
• 27. Maj Henry C. Buse, Jr.
• 28. Maj James W. Frazer
• 29. Maj Henry H. Crockett
• 30. LtCol Lenard B. Cresswell
• 31. Maj Robert O. Brown
• 32. LtCol John A. Bemis
• 33. Col Kenneth W. Benner
• 34. Maj Robert B. Luckey
• 35. LtCol Samuel B. Taxis
• 36. LtCol Eugene H. Price
• 37. LtCol Merrill B. Twining
• 38. LtCol Walker A. Reaves
• 39. LtCol John D. Macklin
• 40. LtCol Hawley C. Waterman
• 41. Maj James C. Murray, Jr.

[Sidebar (page 19):]

The 1st Marine Division Patch

The 1st Division shoulder patch originally was
authorized for wear by members of units who
were organic or attached to the division in its four
landings in the Pacific War. It was the first unit patch to
be authorized for wear in World War II and specifically
commemorated the division’s sacrifices and victory in the
battle for Guadalcanal.

As recalled by General Merrill B. Twining, a lieutenant
colonel and the division’s operations officer on Guadalcanal,
for a short time before the 1st left Guadalcanal for
Australia, there had been some discussion by the senior
staff about uniforming the troops. It appeared that the Marines
might have to wear Army uniforms, which meant that
they would lose their identity and Twining came up with
the idea for a division patch. A number of different designs
were devised by both Lieutenant Colonel Twining and
Captain Donald L. Dickson, adjutant of the 5th Marines,
who had been an artist in civilian life. The one which Twining
prepared on the flight out of Guadalcanal was approved
by Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, the division
commander.

General Twining further recalled that he drew a diamond
in his notebook and “in the middle of the diamond I
doodled a numeral one … [and] I sketched in the word
‘Guadalcanal’ down its length…. I got to thinking that
the whole operation had been under the Southern Cross,
so I drew that in, too…. About an hour later I took
the drawing up to the front of the aircraft to General Vandegrift.
He said, ‘Yes, that’s it!’ and wrote his initials, A.A.V.,
on the bottom of the notebook page.”

Designer of the patch, LtCol Merrill B. Twining (later Gen)
sits in the 1st Marine Division operations bunker. Behind
him is his assistant D-3, a very tired Maj Henry IV. Buse, Jr.

After he arrived in Brisbane, Australia, Colonel Twining
bought a child’s watercolor set and, while confined to
his hotel room by a bout of malaria, drew a bunch of diamonds
on a big sheet, coloring each one differently. He then
took samples to General Vandegrift, who chose one which
was colored a shade of blue that he liked. Then Twining
took the sketch to the Australian Knitting Mills to have it
reproduced, pledging the credit of the post exchange funds
to pay for the patches’ manufacture. Within a week or two
the patches began to roll off the knitting machines, and
Colonel Twining was there to approve them. General Twining
further recalled: “After they came off the machine, I
picked up a sheet of them. They looked very good, and
when they were cut, I picked up one of the patches. It was
one of the first off the machine.”

The division’s post exchanges began selling the patches
almost immediately and they proved to be popular, with
Marines buying extras to give away as souvenirs to Australian
friends or to send home to families. Before long,
newly established Marine divisions, as well as the raider
and parachute units, and as the aircraft wings, sea-going
Marines, Fleet Marine Force Pacific units, and others, were
authorized to have their own distinctive patch, a total of
33, following the lead of the 1st Marine Division. Marines
returning to the United States for duty or on leave from
a unit having a distinctive shoulder insignia were authorized
to wear that insignia until they were assigned to
another unit having a shoulder patch of its own. For many
1st Marine Division men joining another unit and having
to relinquish the wearing of the 1st Division patch, this
rankled.

Shortly after the end of the war, Colonel Twining went
to now-Marine Commandant General Vandegrift saying
that he “no longer thought Marines should wear anything
on their uniforms to distinguish them from other Marines.
He agreed and the patches came off for good.”—Benis M.
Frank

September and the Ridge

Admiral McCain visited Guadalcanal
at the end of August, arriving
in time to greet the aerial reinforcements
he had ordered forward, and
also in time for a taste of Japanese
nightly bombing. He got to experience,
too, what was becoming
another unwanted feature of Cactus
nights: bombardment by Japanese
cruisers and destroyers. General Vandegrift
noted that McCain had gotten
a dose of the “normal ration of23
shells.” The admiral saw enough to
signal his superiors that increased
support for Guadalcanal operations
was imperative and that the “situation
admits no delay whatsoever.” He
also sent a prophetic message to Admirals
King and Nimitz: “Cactus can
be a sinkhole for enemy air power
and can be consolidated, expanded,
and exploited to the enemy’s mortal
hurt.”

On 3 September, the Commanding
General, 1st Marine Aircraft
Wing, Brigadier General Roy S.
Geiger, and his assistant wing commander,
Colonel Louis Woods,
moved forward to Guadalcanal to
take charge of air operations. The arrival
of the veteran Marine aviators
provided an instant lift to the morale
of the pilots and ground crews. It
reinforced their belief that they were
at the leading edge of air combat,
that they were setting the pace for the
rest of Marine aviation. Vandegrift
could thankfully turn over the day-to-day
management of the aerial
defenses of Cactus to the able and experienced
Geiger. There was no
shortage of targets for the mixed air
force of Marine, Army, and Navy
flyers. Daily air attacks by the
Japanese, coupled with steady reinforcement24
attempts by Tanaka’s destroyers
and transports, meant that
every type of plane that could lift off
Henderson’s runway was airborne as
often as possible. Seabees had begun
work on a second airstrip, Fighter
One, which could relieve some of the
pressure on the primary airfield.

National Archives Photo 80-G-29536-413C

This is an oblique view of Henderson Field looking north with
Ironbottom Sound (Sealark Channel) in the background. At
the left center is the “Pagoda,” operations center of Cactus Air
Force flyers throughout their first months of operations ashore.

Most of General Kawaguchi’s
brigade had reached Guadalcanal.
Those who hadn’t, missed their landfall
forever as a result of American
air attacks. Kawaguchi had in mind
a surprise attack on the heart of the
Marine position, a thrust from the
jungle directly at the airfield. To
reach his jumpoff position, the
Japanese general would have to move
through difficult terrain unobserved,
carving his way through the dense
vegetation out of sight of Marine
patrols. The rugged approach route
would lead him to a prominent ridge
topped by Kunai grass which wove
snake-like through the jungle to within
a mile of Henderson’s runway.
Unknown to the Japanese, General
Vandegrift planned on moving his
headquarters to the shelter of a spot
at the inland base of this ridge, a site
better protected, it was hoped, from
enemy bombing and shellfire.

The success of Kawaguchi’s plan
depended upon the Marines keeping
the inland perimeter thinly manned
while they concentrated their forces
on the east and west flanks. This was
not to be. Available intelligence, including
a captured enemy map,
pointed to the likelihood of an attack
on the airfield and Vandegrift moved
his combined raider-parachute battalion
to the most obvious enemy approach
route, the ridge. Colonel
Edson’s men, who scouted Savo Island
after moving to Guadalcanal
and destroyed a Japanese supply base25
at Tasimboko in another shore-to-shore
raid, took up positions on the
forward slopes of the ridge at the
edge of the encroaching jungle on 10
September. Their commander later
said that he “was firmly convinced
that we were in the path of the next
Jap attack.” Earlier patrols had spotted
a sizable Japanese force approaching.
Accordingly, Edson
patrolled extensively as his men dug
in on the ridge and in the flanking
jungle. On the 12th, the Marines
made contact with enemy patrols
confirming the fact that Japanese
troops were definitely “out front.”
Kawaguchi had about 2,000 of his
men with him, enough he thought to
punch through to the airfield.

Japanese planes had dropped
500-pound bombs along the ridge on
the 11th and enemy ships began
shelling the area after nightfall on the
12th, once the threat of American air
attacks subsided. The first Japanese
thrust came at 2100 against Edson’s
left flank. Boiling out of the jungle,
the enemy soldiers attacked fearlessly
into the face of rifle and machine gun
fire, closing to bayonet range. They
were thrown back. They came again,
this time against the right flank,
penetrating the Marines’ positions.
Again they were thrown back. A
third attack closed out the night’s action.
Again it was a close affair, but
by 0230 Edson told Vandegrift his
men could hold. And they did.

On the morning of 13 September,
Edson called his company commanders
together and told them:
“They were just testing, just testing.
They’ll be back.” He ordered all positions
improved and defenses consolidated
and pulled his lines towards
the airfield along the ridge’s center
spine. The 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,
his backup on Tulagi, moved into position
to reinforce again.

EDSON’S (BLOODY) RIDGE

12–14 SEPTEMBER 1942

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 310563

Maj Kenneth D. Bailey, commander of
Company C, 1st Raider Battalion, was
awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously
for heroic and inspiring leadership
during the Battle of Edson’s Ridge.

The next night’s attacks were as
fierce as any man had seen. The
Japanese were everywhere, fighting
hand-to-hand in the Marines’ foxholes
and gun pits and filtering past
forward positions to attack from the
rear. Division Sergeant Major
Sheffield Banta shot one in the new
command post. Colonel Edson appeared
wherever the fighting was
toughest, encouraging his men to
their utmost efforts. The man-to-man
battles lapped over into the jungle on
either flank of the ridge, and engineer
and pioneer positions were attacked.
The reserve from the 5th Marines
was fed into the fight. Artillerymen
from the 5th Battalion, 11th Marines,
as they had on the previous night,
fired their 105mm howitzers at any
called target. The range grew as short
as 1,600 yards from tube to impact.
The Japanese finally could take no
more. They pulled back as dawn approached.
On the slopes of the ridge
and in the surrounding jungle they
left more than 600 bodies; another
600 men were wounded. The remnants
of the Kawaguchi force staggered
back toward their lines to the
west, a grueling, hellish eight-day
march that saw many more of the
enemy perish.

The cost to Edson’s force for its
epic defense was also heavy. Fifty-nine
men were dead, 10 were missing
in action, and 194 were wounded.
These losses, coupled with the
casualties of Tulagi, Gavutu, and
Tanambogo, meant the end of the 1st
Parachute Battalion as an effective
fighting unit. Only 89 men of the27
parachutists’ original strength could
walk off the ridge, soon in legend to
become “Bloody Ridge” or “Edson’s
Ridge.” Both Colonel Edson and Captain
Kenneth D. Bailey, commanding
the raider’s Company C, were awarded
the Medal of Honor for their
heroic and inspirational actions.

On 13 and 14 September, the
Japanese attempted to support
Kawaguchi’s attack on the ridge with
thrusts against the flanks of the Marine
perimeter. On the east, enemy
troops attempting to penetrate the
lines of the 3d Battalion, 1st Marines,
were caught in the open on a grass
plain and smothered by artillery fire;
at least 200 died. On the west, the
3d Battalion, 5th Marines, holding
ridge positions covering the coastal
road, fought off a determined attacking
force that reached its front lines.

28
The victory at the ridge gave a
great boost to Allied homefront
morale, and reinforced the opinion
of the men ashore on Guadalcanal
that they could take on anything the
enemy could send against them. At
upper command echelons, the leaders
were not so sure that the ground
Marines and their motley air force
could hold. Intercepted Japanese dispatches
revealed that the myth of the
2,000-man defending force had been
completely dispelled. Sizable naval
forces and two divisions of Japanese
troops were now committed to conquer
the Americans on Guadalcanal.
Cactus Air Force, augmented frequently
by Navy carrier squadrons,
made the planned reinforcement effort
a high-risk venture. But it was
a risk the Japanese were prepared to
take.

On 18 September, the long-awaited
7th Marines, reinforced by
the 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, and
other division troops, arrived at
Guadalcanal. As the men from
Samoa landed they were greeted with
friendly derision by Marines already
on the island. The 7th had been the
first regiment of the 1st Division to
go overseas; its men, many thought
then, were likely to be the first to see
combat. The division had been careful
to send some of its best men to
Samoa and now had them back. One
of the new and salty combat veterans
of the 5th Marines remarked to a
friend in the 7th that he had waited
a long time “to see our first team get
into the game.” Providentially, a
separate supply convoy reached the
island at the same time as the 7th’s
arrival, bringing with it badly needed
aviation gas and the first resupply
of ammunition since D-Day.

The Navy covering force for the
American reinforcement and supply
convoys was hit hard by Japanese
submarines. The carrier Wasp was
torpedoed and sunk, the battleship
North Carolina (BB 55) was
damaged, and the destroyer O’Brien
(DD 415) was hit so badly it broke
up and sank on its way to drydock.
The Navy had accomplished its mission,
the 7th Marines had landed,
but at a terrible cost. About the only
good result of the devastating
Japanese torpedo attacks was that the
Wasp’s surviving aircraft joined Cactus
Air Force, as the planes of the
Saratoga and Enterprise had done
when their carriers required combat
repairs. Now, the Hornet (CV 8) was
the only whole fleet carrier left in the
South Pacific.

As the ships that brought the 7th
Marines withdrew, they took with
them the survivors of the 1st
Parachute Battalion and sick bays full
of badly wounded men. General
Vandegrift now had 10 infantry battalions,
one understrength raider battalion,
and five artillery battalions
ashore; the 3d Battalion, 2d Marines,
had come over from Tulagi also. He
reorganized the defensive perimeter
into 10 sectors for better control, giving
the engineer, pioneer, and amphibian
tractor battalions sectors
along the beach. Infantry battalions
manned the other sectors, including
the inland perimeter in the jungle.
Each infantry regiment had two battalions
on line and one in reserve.
Vandegrift also had the use of a select
group of infantrymen who were
training to be scouts and snipers under
the leadership of Colonel William
J. “Wild Bill” Whaling, an experienced
jungle hand, marksman,
and hunter, whom he had appointed
to run a school to sharpen the division’s
fighting skills. As men
finished their training under Whaling
and went back to their outfits,
others took their place and the Whaling
group was available to scout and
spearhead operations.

Vandegrift now had enough men
ashore on Guadalcanal, 19,200, to
expand his defensive scheme. He
decided to seize a forward position
along the east bank of the Matanikau
River, in effect strongly outposting
his west flank defenses against the
probability of strong enemy attacks
from the area where most Japanese
troops were landing. First, however,
he was going to test the Japanese
reaction with a strong probing force.

He chose the fresh 1st Battalion,
7th Marines, commanded by Lieutenant
Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty”
Puller, to move inland along the
slopes of Mt. Austen and patrol
north towards the coast and the
Japanese-held area. Puller’s battalion
ran into Japanese troops bivouacked
on the slopes of Austen on the 24th
and in a sharp firefight had seven
men killed and 25 wounded. Vandegrift
sent the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines,
forward to reinforce Puller and
help provide the men needed to carry
the casualties out of the jungle.
Now reinforced, Puller continued his
advance, moving down the east bank
of the Matanikau. He reached the
coast on the 26th as planned, where
he drew intensive fire from enemy
positions on the ridges west of the
river. An attempt by the 2d Battalion,
5th Marines, to cross was beaten
back.

About this time, the 1st Raider
Battalion, its original mission one of
establishing a patrol base west of the
Matanikau, reached the vicinity of
the firefight, and joined in. Vandegrift
sent Colonel Edson, now the
commander of the 5th Marines, forward
to take charge of the expanded
force. He was directed to attack on
the 27th and decided to send the raiders
inland to outflank the Japanese
defenders. The battalion, commanded
by Edson’s former executive
officer, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel B.
Griffith II, ran into a hornet’s nest of
Japanese who had crossed the
Matanikau during the night. A garbled
message led Edson to believe
that Griffith’s men were advancing
according to plan, so he decided to
land the companies of the 1st Battalion,
7th Marines, behind the enemy’s
Matanikau position and strike the
Japanese from the rear while Rosecran’s
men attacked across the river.

The landing was made without incident29
and the 7th Marines’ companies
moved inland only to be
ambushed and cut off from the sea
by the Japanese. A rescue force of
landing craft moved with difficulty
through Japanese fire, urged on by
Puller who accompanied the boats
on the destroyer Ballard (DD 660).
The Marines were evacuated after
fighting their way to the beach covered
by the destroyer’s fire and the
machine guns of a Marine SBD overhead.
Once the 7th Marines companies
got back to the perimeter,
landing near Kukum, the raider and
5th Marines battalions pulled back
from the Matanikau. The confirmation
that the Japanese would strongly
contest any westward advance cost
the Marines 60 men killed and 100
wounded.

The Japanese the Marines had encountered
were mainly men from the
4th Regiment of the 2d (Sendai) Division;
prisoners confirmed that the
division was landing on the island.
Included in the enemy reinforcements
were 150mm howitzers, guns capable
of shelling the airfield from positions
near Kokumbona. Clearly, a
new and stronger enemy attack was
pending.

As September drew to a close, a
flood of promotions had reached the
division, nine lieutenant colonels put
on their colonel’s eagles and there
were 14 new lieutenant colonels also.
Vandegrift made Colonel Gerald C.
Thomas, his former operations30
officer, the new division chief of
staff, and had a short time earlier
given Edson the 5th Marines. Many
of the older, senior officers, picked
for the most part in the order they
had joined the division, were now
sent back to the States. There they
would provide a new level of combat
expertise in the training and organization
of the many Marine units
that were forming. The air wing was
not quite ready yet to return its experienced
pilots to rear areas, but the
vital combat knowledge they possessed
was much needed in the training
pipeline. They, too—the
survivors—would soon be rotating
back to rear areas, some for a much-needed
break before returning to
combat and others to lead new squadrons
into the fray.

Japanese Model 4 (1919) 150mm Howitzer

[Sidebar (page 22):]

Sergeant Major Sir Jacob Charles Vouza

Jacob Charles Vouza was born in 1900 at Tasimboko,
Guadalcanal, British Solomon Islands Protectorate,
and educated at the South Seas Evangelical Mission
School there. In 1916 he joined the Solomon Islands Protectorate
Armed Constabulary, from which he retired at
the rank of sergeant major in 1941 after 25 years of service.

After the Japanese invaded his home island in World War
II, he returned to active duty with the British forces and
volunteered to work with the Coastwatchers. Vouza’s experience
as a scout had already been established when the
1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal. On 7 August
1942 he rescued a downed naval pilot from the USS Wasp
who was shot down inside Japanese territory. He guided
the pilot to friendly lines where Vouza met the Marines for
the first time.

Vouza then volunteered to scout behind enemy lines for
the Marines. On 27 August he was captured by the Japanese
while on a Marine Corps mission to locate suspected enemy
lookout stations. Having found a small American flag
in Vouza’s loincloth, the Japanese tied him to a tree and
tried to force him to reveal information about Allied forces.
Vouza was questioned for hours, but refused to talk. He
was tortured and bayoneted about the arms, throat, shoulder,
face, and stomach, and left to die.

He managed to free himself after his captors departed,
and made his way through the miles of jungle to American
lines. There he gave valuable intelligence information
to the Marines about an impending Japanese attack before
accepting medical attention.

After spending 12 days in the hospital, Vouza then
returned to duty as the chief scout for the Marines. He accompanied
Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson and the
2d Marine Raider Battalion when they made their 30-day
raid behind enemy lines at Guadalcanal.

Sergeant Major Vouza was highly decorated for his
World War II service. The Silver Star was presented to him
personally by Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift,
commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, for refusing
to give information under Japanese torture. He also was
awarded the Legion of Merit for outstanding service with
the 2d Raider Battalion during November and December
1942, and the British George Medal for gallant conduct and
exceptional devotion to duty. He later received the Police
Long Service Medal and, in 1957, was made a Member of
the British Empire for long and faithful government service.

After the war, Vouza continued to serve his fellow islanders.
In 1949, he was appointed district headman, and
president of the Guadalcanal Council, from 1952–1958. He
served as a member of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate
Advisory Council from 1950 to 1960.

He made many friends during his long association with
the U.S. Marine Corps and through the years was continually
visited on Guadalcanal by Marines. During 1968, Vouza
visited the United States, where he was the honored guest
of the 1st Marine Division Association. In 1979, he was
knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. He died on 15
March 1984.—Ann A. Ferrante

[Sidebar (page 23):]

M3A1 37mm Antitank Gun

The M3 antitank gun, based on the successful German
Panzer Abwehr Kanone (PAK)-36, was developed
by the U.S. Army in the late 1930s as a
replacement for the French 37mm Puteaux gun, used in
World War I but unable to destroy new tanks being
produced.

The M3 was adopted because of its accuracy, fire control,
penetration, and mobility. Towed by its prime mover,
the 4×4 quarter-ton truck, the gun would trail at 50 mph
on roads. When traveling crosscountry, gullies, shell holes,
mud holes, and slopes of 26 degrees were negotiated with
ease. In 1941, the gun was redesignated the M3A1 when
the muzzles were threaded to accept a muzzle brake that
was rarely, if ever, used.

At the time of its adoption, the M3 could destroy any
tank then being produced in the world. However, by the
time the United States entered the war, the M3 was outmatched
by the tanks it would have met in Europe. The
Japanese tanks were smaller and more vulnerable to the
M3 throughout the war. In the Pacific, it was used against
bunkers, pillboxes and, when loaded with canister, against
banzai charges. It was employed throughout the war by
Marine regimental weapons companies, but in reduced
numbers as the fighting continued. It was replaced in the
European Theater by the M1 57mm antitank gun.

The 37mm antitank gun, manned by a crew of four who
fired a 1.61-pound projectile with an effective range of 500
yards.—Stephen L. Amos and Kenneth L. Smith-Christmas

[Sidebar (page 29):]

The President of the United States
takes pleasure in presenting
the Medal of Honor posthumously to
Douglas Albert Munro
Signalman First Class
United States Coast Guard
for service as set forth
in the following citation:

Painting by Bernard D’Andrea, Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard Historical Office

For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous
gallantry in action above and beyond the call
of duty as Officer in Charge of a group of
twenty-four Higgins boats engaged in the
evacuation of a battalion of Marines trapped
by enemy Japanese forces at Point Cruz,
Guadalcanal, on September 27, 1942. After
making preliminary plans for the evacuation
of nearly five hundred beleaguered Marines,
Munro, under constant strafing by enemy
machine guns on the island and at great risk
of his life, daringly led five of his small craft
toward the shore. As he closed the beach, he
signalled the others to land and then in order
to draw the enemy’s fire and protect the
heavily loaded boats, he valiantly placed his
craft, with its two small guns, as a shield between
the beachhead and the Japanese. When
the perilous task of evacuation was nearly
completed, Munro was instantly killed by
enemy fire, but his crew, two of whom were
wounded, carried on until the last boat had
loaded and cleared the beach. By his outstanding
leadership, expert planning, and
dauntless devotion to duty, he and his courageous
comrades undoubtedly saved the
lives of many who otherwise would have
perished. He gallantly gave up his life in
defense of his country. /s/ Franklin Roosevelt

October and the Japanese Offensive

On 30 September, unexpectedly, a
B-17 carrying Admiral Nimitz made
an emergency landing at Henderson
Field. The CinCPac made the most
of the opportunity. He visited the
front lines, saw Edson’s Ridge, and
talked to a number of Marines. He
reaffirmed to Vandegrift that his
overriding mission was to hold the
airfield. He promised all the support
he could give and after awarding
Navy Crosses to a number of Marines,
including Vandegrift, left the
next day visibly encouraged by what
he had seen.

The next Marine move involved a
punishing return to the Matanikau,
this time with five infantry battalions
and the Whaling group. Whaling
commanded his men and the 3d Battalion,
2d Marines, in a thrust inland
to clear the way for two battalions
of the 7th Marines, the 1st and 2d,
to drive through and hook toward
the coast, hitting the Japanese holding31
along the Matanikau. Edson’s 2d
and 3d Battalions would attack
across the river mouth. All the division’s
artillery was positioned to fire
in support.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 61534

A M1918 155mm howitzer is fired by artillery crewmen of the
11th Marines in support of ground forces attacking the enemy.
Despite the lack of sound-flash equipment to locate hostile
artillery, Col del Valle’s guns were able to quiet enemy fire.

On the 7th, Whaling’s force moved
into the jungle about 2,000 yards upstream
on the Matanikau, encountering
Japanese troops that harassed his
forward elements, but not in enough
strength to stop the advance. He
bypassed the enemy positions and
dug in for the night. Behind him the
7th Marines followed suit, prepared
to move through his lines, cross the
river, and attack north toward the
Japanese on the 8th. The 5th Marines’
assault battalions moving
toward the Matanikau on the 7th ran
into Japanese in strength about 400
yards from the river. Unwittingly, the
Marines had run into strong advance
elements of the Japanese 4th Regiment,
which had crossed the
Matanikau in order to establish a
base from which artillery could fire
into the Marine perimeter. The fighting
was intense and the 3d Battalion,
5th, could make little progress,
although the 2d Battalion encountered
slight opposition and won
through to the river bank. It then
turned north to hit the inland flank
of the enemy troops. Vandegrift sent
forward a company of raiders to reinforce
the 5th, and it took a holding
position on the right, towards the
beach.

Rain poured down on the 8th, all
day long, virtually stopping all forward
progress, but not halting the
close-in fighting around the Japanese
pocket. The enemy troops finally
retreated, attempting to escape the
gradually encircling Marines. They
smashed into the raider’s position
nearest to their escape route. A wild
hand-to-hand battle ensued and a
few Japanese broke through to reach
and cross the river. The rest died
fighting.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 50963

More than 200 Japanese soldiers alone were killed in a frenzied attack in the sandspit
where the Tenaru River flows into Ironbottom Sound (Sealark Channel).

On the 9th, Whaling’s force,
flanked by the 2d and then the 1st
Battalion, 7th Marines, crossed the
Matanikau and then turned and followed
ridge lines to the sea. Puller’s
battalion discovered a number of
Japanese in a ravine to his front, fired
his mortars, and called in artillery,
while his men used rifles and
machine guns to pick off enemy
troops trying to escape what proved
to be a death trap. When his mortar
ammunition began to run short,
Puller moved on toward the beach,
joining the rest of Whaling’s force,
which had encountered no opposition.
The Marines then recrossed the
Mantanikau, joined Edson’s troops,
and marched back to the perimeter,
leaving a strong combat outpost at
the Matanikau, now cleared of
Japanese. General Vandegrift, apprised
by intelligence sources that a
major Japanese attack was coming
from the west, decided to consolidate
his positions, leaving no sizable Marine
force more than a day’s march
from the perimeter. The Marine advance
on 7–9 October had thwarted
Japanese plans for an early attack
and cost the enemy more than 700
men. The Marines paid a price too,
65 dead and 125 wounded.

32
There was another price that
Guadalcanal was exacting from both
sides. Disease was beginning to fell
men in numbers that equalled the
battle casualties. In addition to gastroenteritis,
which greatly weakened
those who suffered its crippling
stomach cramps, there were all kinds
of tropical fungus infections, collectively
known as “jungle rot,” which
produced uncomfortable rashes on
men’s feet, armpits, elbows, and
crotches, a product of seldom being
dry. If it didn’t rain, sweat provided
the moisture. On top of this came
hundreds of cases of malaria.
Atabrine tablets provided some
relief, besides turning the skin yellow,
but they were not effective enough
to stop the spread of the mosquito-borne
infection. Malaria attacks were
so pervasive that nothing short of
complete prostration, becoming a litter
case, could earn a respite in the
hospital. Naturally enough, all these
diseases affected most strongly the
men who had been on the island the
longest, particularly those who experienced
the early days of short rations.
Vandegrift had already argued
with his superiors that when his men
eventually got relieved they should
not be sent to another tropical island
hospital, but rather to a place where
there was a real change of atmosphere
and climate. He asked that
Auckland or Wellington, New
Zealand, be considered.

For the present, however, there
was to be no relief for men starting
their third month on Guadalcanal.
The Japanese would not abandon
their plan to seize back Guadalcanal
and gave painful evidence of their intentions
near mid-October. General
Hyakutake himself landed on
Guadalcanal on 7 October to oversee
the coming offensive. Elements of
Major General Masao Maruyama’s
Sendai Division, already a factor in
the fighting near the Matanikau,
landed with him. More men were
coming. And the Japanese, taking
advantage of the fact that Cactus
flyers had no night attack capability,
planned to ensure that no planes
at all would rise from Guadalcanal
to meet them.

On 11 October, U.S. Navy surface
ships took a hand in stopping the
“Tokyo Express,” the nickname that
had been given to Admiral Tanaka’s
almost nightly reinforcement forays.
A covering force of five cruisers and
five destroyers, located near Rennell
Island and commanded by Rear Admiral
Norman Scott, got word that
many ships were approaching
Guadalcanal. Scott’s mission was to
protect an approaching reinforcement
convoy and he steamed toward
Cactus at flank speed eager to engage.
He encountered more ships
than he had expected, a bombardment33
group of three heavy cruisers
and two destroyers, as well as six destroyers
escorting two seaplane carrier
transports. Scott maneuvered between
Savo Island and Cape Esperance,
Guadalcanal’s western tip, and
ran head-on into the bombardment
group.

Alerted by a scout plane from his
flagship, San Francisco (CA 38),
spottings later confirmed by radar
contacts on the Helena (CL 50), the
Americans opened fire before the
Japanese, who had no radar, knew
of their presence. One enemy destroyer
sank immediately, two cruisers
were badly damaged, one, the
Furutaka, later foundered, and the
remaining cruiser and destroyer
turned away from the inferno of
American fire. Scott’s own force was
punished by enemy return fire which
damaged two cruisers and two destroyers,
one of which, the Duncan
(DD 485), sank the following day.
On the 12th too, Cactus flyers spotted
two of the reinforcement destroyer
escorts retiring and sank them
both. The Battle of Cape Esperance
could be counted an American naval
victory, one sorely needed at the
time.

Its way cleared by Scott’s encounter
with the Japanese, a really welcome
reinforcement convoy arrived
at the island on 13 October when the
164th Infantry of the Americal Division
arrived. The soldiers, members
of a National Guard outfit
originally from North Dakota, were
equipped with Garand M-1 rifles, a
weapon of which most overseas Marines
had only heard. In rate of fire,
the semiautomatic Garand could easily
outperform the single-shot, bolt-action
Springfields the Marines carried
and the bolt-action rifles the
Japanese carried, but most 1st Division
Marines of necessity touted the
Springfield as inherently more accurate
and a better weapon. This did
not prevent some light-fingered Marines
from acquiring Garands when
the occasion presented itself. And
such an occasion did present itself
while the soldiers were landing and
their supplies were being moved to
dumps. Several flights of Japanese
bombers arrived over Henderson
Field, relatively unscathed by the
defending fighters, and began dropping
their bombs. The soldiers headed
for cover and alert Marines,
inured to the bombing, used the interval
to “liberate” interesting cartons
and crates. The news that the Army
had arrived spread across the island
like wildfire, for it meant to all Marines
that they eventually would be
relieved. There was hope.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photos 304183 and 302980

Two other Marine aviators awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism and intrepidity
in the air were Capt Jefferson J. DeBlanc, left, and Maj Robert E. Galer, right.

As if the bombing was not enough
grief, the Japanese opened on the airfield
with their 150mm howitzers
also. Altogether the men of the 164th
got a rude welcome to Guadalcanal.
And on that night, 13–14 October,
they shared a terrifying experience
with the Marines that no one would
ever forget.

Determined to knock out Henderson
Field and protect their soldiers
landing in strength west of Koli
Point, the enemy commanders sent
the battleships Kongo and Haruna
into Ironbottom Sound to bombard
the Marine positions. The usual
Japanese flare planes heralded the
bombardment, 80 minutes of sheer
hell which had 14-inch shells exploding
with such effect that the accompanying
cruiser fire was scarcely
noticed. No one was safe; no place
was safe. No dugout had been built
to withstand 14-inch shells. One witness,
a seasoned veteran demonstrably
cool under enemy fire, opined
that there was nothing worse in war
than helplessly being on the receiving
end of naval gunfire. He remembered
“huge trees being cut apart and
flying about like toothpicks.” And he
was on the frontlines, not the prime
enemy target. The airfield and its environs
were a shambles when dawn
broke. The naval shelling, together
with the night’s artillery fire and
bombing, had left Cactus Air Force’s
commander, General Geiger, with a
handful of aircraft still flyable, an airfield
thickly cratered by shells and
bombs, and a death toll of 41. Still,
from Henderson or Fighter One,
which now became the main airstrip,
the Cactus Flyers had to attack, for
the morning also revealed a shore
and sea full of inviting targets.

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 awarded34
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,35
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.

General Vandegrift knew the
Japanese were going to attack.
Patrols and reconnaissance flights
had clearly indicated the push would
be from the west, where the enemy
reinforcements had landed. The
American commander changed his
dispositions accordingly. There were
Japanese troops east of the perimeter,
too, but not in any significant
strength. The new infantry regiment,
the 164th, reinforced by Marine special
weapons units, was put into the
line to hold the eastern flank along
6,600 yards, curving inland to join up
with 7th Marines near Edson’s Ridge.
The 7th held 2,500 yards from the
ridge to the Lunga. From the Lunga,
the 1st Marines had a 3,500-yard sector
of jungle running west to the
point where the line curved back to
the beach again in the 5th Marines’
sector. Since the attack was expected
from the west, the 3d Battalions
of each of the 1st and 7th Marines
held a strong outpost position forward
of the 5th Marines’ lines along
the east bank of the Matanikau.

In the lull before the attack, if a
time of patrol clashes, Japanese
cruiser-destroyer bombardments,
bomber attacks, and artillery harassment
could properly be called a
lull, Vandegrift was visited by the
Commandant of the Marine Corps,
Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb.
The Commandant flew in on
21 October to see for himself how his
Marines were faring. It also proved
to be an occasion for both senior Marines
to meet the new ComSoPac,
Vice Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey.
Admiral Nimitz had announced
Halsey’s appointment on 18 October
and the news was welcome in Navy
and Marine ranks throughout the Pacific.
Halsey’s deserved reputation for
elan and aggressiveness promised
renewed attention to the situation on
Guadalcanal. On the 22d, Holcomb
and Vandegrift flew to Noumea to
meet with Halsey and to receive and
give a round of briefings on the Allied
situation. After Vandegrift had
described his position, he argued
strongly against the diversion of reinforcements
intended for Cactus to
any other South Pacific venue, a
sometime factor of Admiral Turner’s
strategic vision. He insisted that he
needed all of the Americal Division
and another 2d Marine Division regiment
to beef up his forces, and that
more than half of his veterans were
worn out by three months’ fighting
and the ravages of jungle-incurred
diseases. Admiral Halsey told the
Marine general: “You go back there,
Vandegrift. I promise to get you
everything I have.”

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 13628

During a lull in the fight, a Marine machine gunner takes a break for coffee, with
his sub-machine gun on his knee and his 30-caliber light machine gun in position.

When Vandegrift returned to
Guadalcanal, Holcomb moved on to
Pearl Harbor to meet with Nimitz,
carrying Halsey’s recommendation
that, in the future, landing force commanders
once established ashore,
would have equal command status
with Navy amphibious force commanders.
At Pearl, Nimitz approved
Halsey’s recommendation—which
Holcomb had drafted—and in
Washington so did King. In effect,
then, the command status of all future
Pacific amphibious operations
was determined by the events of
Guadalcanal. Another piece of news
Vandegrift received from Holcomb
also boded well for the future of the
Marine Corps. Holcomb indicated36
that if President Roosevelt did not
reappoint him, unlikely in view of his
age and two terms in office, he would
recommend that Vandegrift be appointed
the next Commandant.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 513191

On the occasion of the visit of the Commandant, MajGen
Thomas Holcomb, some of Operation Watchtower’s major
staff and command officers took time out from the fighting
to pose with him. From left, front row: Col William J. Whaling
(Whaling Group); Col Amor LeRoy Sims (CO, 7th Marines);
Col Gerald C. Thomas (Division Chief of Staff); Col
Pedro A. del Valle (CO, 11th Marines); Col William E. Riley
(member of Gen Holcomb’s party); MajGen Roy S. Geiger
(CG, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing); Gen Holcomb; MajGen
Ralph J. Mitchell (Director of Aviation, Headquarters, U.S.
Marine Corps); BGen Bennet Puryear, Jr. (Assistant Quartermaster
of the Marine Corps); Col Clifton B. Cates (CO, 1st
Marines). Second row (between Whaling and Sims): LtCol
Raymond P. Coffman (Division Supply Officer); Maj James
C. Murray (Division Personnel Officer); (behind Gen Holcomb)
LtCol Merrill B. Twining (Division Operations Officer).

This news of future events had little
chance of diverting Vandegrift’s
attention when he flew back to
Guadalcanal, for the Japanese were
in the midst of their planned offensive.
On the 20th, an enemy patrol
accompanied by two tanks tried to
find a way through the line held by
Lieutenant Colonel William N.
McKelvy, Jr.’s 3d Battalion, 1st Marines.
A sharpshooting 37mm gun
crew knocked out one tank and the
enemy force fell back, meanwhile
shelling the Marine positions with artillery.
Near sunset the next day, the
Japanese tried again, this time with
more artillery fire and more tanks in
the fore, but again a 37mm gun
knocked out a lead tank and discouraged
the attack. On 22 October,
the enemy paused, waiting for
Maruyama’s force to get into position
inland. On the 23d, planned as the
day of the Sendai’s main attack, the
Japanese dropped a heavy rain of artillery
and mortar fire on McKelvy’s
positions near the Matanikau River
mouth. Near dusk, nine 18-ton medium
tanks clanked out of the trees
onto the river’s sandbar and just as
quickly eight of them were riddled
by the 37s. One tank got across the
river, a Marine blasted a track off
with a grenade, and a 75mm halftrack
finished it off in the ocean’s
surf. The following enemy infantry
was smothered by Marine artillery
fire as all battalions of the augmented
11th Marines rained shells on the
massed attackers. Hundreds of
Japanese were casualties and three
more tanks were destroyed. Later, an
inland thrust further upstream was
easily beaten back. The abortive
coastal attack did almost nothing to
aid Maruyama’s inland offensive, but
did cause Vandegrift to shift one battalion,
the 2d Battalion, 7th Marines,
out of the lines to the east and into
the 4,000-yard gap between the Matanikau
position and the perimeter.
This move proved providential since37
one of Maruyama’s planned attacks
was headed right for this area.

Although patrols had encountered
no Japanese east or south of the jungled
perimeter up to the 24th, the
Matanikau attempts had alerted
everyone. When General Maruyama
finally was satisfied that his men had
struggled through to appropriate assault
positions, after delaying his day
of attack three times, he was ready
on 24 October. The Marines were
waiting.

An observer from the 1st Battalion,
7th Marines, spotted an enemy
officer surveying Edson’s Ridge on
the 24th, and scout-snipers reported
smoke from numerous rice fires rising
from a valley about two miles
south of Lieutenant Colonel Puller’s
positions. Six battalions of the Sendai
Division were poised to attack,
and near midnight the first elements
of the enemy hit and bypassed a
platoon-sized outpost forward of
Puller’s barbed-wire entanglements.
Warned by the outpost, Puller’s men
waited, straining to see through a
dark night and a driving rain. Suddenly,
the Japanese charged out of
the jungle, attacking in Puller’s area
near the ridge and the flat ground to
the east. The Marines replied with38
everything they had, calling in artillery,
firing mortars, relying heavily
on crossing fields of machine gun
fire to cut down the enemy infantrymen.
Thankfully, the enemy’s artillery,
mortars, and other supporting
arms were scattered back along the
Maruyama Trail; they had proved
too much of a burden for the infantrymen
to carry forward.

Marine Corps Personal Papers Collection

Five Japanese tanks sit dead in the water, destroyed by Marine
37mm gunfire during the abortive attempt to force the
Marine perimeter near the mouth of the Matanikau River in
late October. Many Japanese soldiers lost their lives also.

A wedge was driven into the Marine
lines, but eventually straightened
out with repeated counterattacks.
Puller soon realized his battalion was
being hit by a strong Japanese force
capable of repeated attacks. He called
for reinforcements and the Army’s 3d
Battalion, 164th Infantry (Lieutenant
Colonel Robert K. Hall), was ordered
forward, its men sliding and slipping
in the rain as they trudged a mile
south along Edson’s Ridge. Puller met
Hall at the head of his column, and
the two officers walked down the
length of the Marine lines, peeling off
an Army squad at a time to feed into
the lines. When the Japanese attacked
again as they did all night long, the
soldiers and Marines fought back
together. By 0330, the Army battalion
was completely integrated into
the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines’ lines
and the enemy attacks were getting
weaker and weaker. The American
return fire—including flanking fire
from machine guns and Weapons
Company, 7th Marines’ 37mm guns
remaining in the positions held by 2d
Battalion, 164th Infantry, on Puller’s
left—was just too much to take. Near
dawn, Maruyama pulled his men
back to regroup and prepare to attack
again.

With daylight, Puller and Hall reordered
the lines, putting the 3d Battalion,
164th, into its own positions
on Puller’s left, tying in with the rest
of the Army regiment. The driving
rains had turned Fighter One into a
quagmire, effectively grounding Cactus
flyers. Japanese planes used the
“free ride” to bomb Marine positions.
Their artillery fired incessantly and
a pair of Japanese destroyers added
their gunfire to the bombardment until
they got too close to the shore and
the 3d Defense Battalion’s 5-inch
guns drove them off. As the sun bore
down, the runways dried and afternoon
enemy attacks were met by
Cactus fighters, who downed 22
Japanese planes with a loss of three
of their own.

As night came on again, Maruyama
tried more of the same, with the
same result. The Army-Marine lines
held and the Japanese were cut down
in droves by rifle, machine gun, mortar,
37mm, and artillery fire. To the
west, an enemy battalion mounted
three determined attacks against the
positions held by Lieutenant Colonel
Herman H. Hanneken’s 2d Battalion,
7th Marines, thinly tied in with
Puller’s battalion on the left and the
3d Battalion, 7th Marines, on the
right. The enemy finally penetrated
the positions held by Company F, but
a counterattack led by Major Odell
M. Conoley, the battalion’s executive
officer, drove off the Japanese. Again
at daylight the American positions
were secure and the enemy had
retreated. They would not come
back; the grand Japanese offensive of
the Sendai Division was over.

About 3,500 enemy troops had
died during the attacks. General
Maruyama’s proud boast that he
“would exterminate the enemy
around the airfield in one blow”
proved an empty one. What was left
of his force now straggled back over
the Maruyama Trail, losing, as had
the Kawaguchi force in the same situation,
most of its seriously wounded39
men. The Americans, Marines
and soldiers together, probably lost
300 men killed and wounded; existing
records are sketchy and incomplete.
One result of the battle,
however, was a warm welcome to the
164th Infantry from the 1st Marine
Division. Vandegrift particularly
commended Lieutenant Colonel
Hall’s battalion, stating the “division
was proud to have serving with it
another unit which had stood the test
of battle.” And Colonel Cates sent a
message to the 164th’s Colonel Bryant
Moore saying that the 1st Marines
“were proud to serve with a unit such
as yours.”

Amidst all the heroics of the two
nights’ fighting there were many men
who were singled out for recognition
and an equally large number who
performed great deeds that were
never recognized. Two men stood out
above all others, and on succeeding
nights, Sergeant John Basilone of the
1st Battalion, 7th Marines, and Platoon
Sergeant Mitchell Paige of the
2d Battalion, both machine gun section
heads, were recognized as having
performed “above and beyond the
call of duty” in the inspiring words
of their Medal of Honor citations.

[Sidebar (page 37):]

Reising Gun

The Reising gun was designed and developed by noted
gun inventor Eugene Reising. It was patented in
1940 and manufactured by the old gun-making firm
of Harrington and Richardson of Worcester, Massachusetts.
It is said that it was made on existing machine tools, some
dating back to the Civil War, and of ordinary steel rather
than ordnance steel. With new machine tools and ordnance
steel scarce and needed for more demanding weapons, the
Reising met an immediate requirement for many sub-machine
guns at a time when production of Thompson
M1928 and M1 sub-machine guns hadn’t caught up with
demand and the stamped-out M3 “grease gun” had not yet
been invented. It was a wartime expedient.

Captain Donald L. Dickson, USMCR

The Reising was made in two different models, the 50
and the 55. The Model 50 had a full wooden stock and
a Cutts compensator attached to the muzzle. The compensator,
a device which reduced the upward muzzle climb
from recoil, was invented by Richard M. Cutts, Sr., and
his son, Richard M. Cutts, Jr., both of whom became Marine
brigadier generals. The other version was dubbed the
Model 55. It had a folding metal-wire shoulder stock which
swivelled on the wooden pistol grip. It also had a shorter
barrel and no compensator. It was intended for use by
parachutists, tank crews, and others needing a compact
weapon. Both versions of the Reising fired .45-caliber ammunition,
the same cartridge as the Colt automatic pistol
and the Thompson.

In all, there were approximately 100,000 Reising sub-machine
guns produced between 1940 and 1942. Small
numbers of the weapons were acquired by both Great Britain
and the Soviet Union. However, most were used by
the U.S. Marine Corps in the Solomon Islands campaign.
The Model 55 was issued to both Marine parachute battalions
and Marine raiders, seeing service first on Guadalcanal.
After its dubious debut in combat it was withdrawn
from frontline service in 1943 due to several flaws in design
and manufacture.

The Reising’s major shortcoming was its propensity for
jamming. This was due to both a design problem in the
magazine lips and the fact that magazines were made of
a soft sheet steel. The weapon’s safety mechanism didn’t
always work and if the butt was slammed down on the
deck, the hammer would set back against the mainspring
and then fly forward, firing a chambered cartridge. The
design allowed the entry of dirt into the mechanism and
close tolerances caused it to jam. Finally, the steel used allowed
excessive rust to form in the tropical humidity of the
Solomons. Nevertheless, at six pounds, the Reising was
handier than the 10-pound Thompson, more accurate,
pleasanter to shoot, and reliable under other than combat
conditions, but one always had to keep the muzzle pointed
in a safe direction. The Model 50 was also issued to Marines
for guard duty at posts and stations in the United
States.—John G. Griffiths

November and the Continuing Buildup

While the soldiers and Marines
were battling the Japanese ashore, a
patrol plane sighted a large Japanese
fleet near the Santa Cruz Islands to
the east of the Solomons. The enemy
force was formidable, 4 carriers
and 4 battleships, 8 cruisers and 28
destroyers, all poised for a victorious
attack when Maruyama’s capture of
Henderson Field was signalled. Admiral
Halsey’s reaction to the inviting
targets was characteristic, he
signaled Rear Admiral Thomas C.
Kinkaid, with the Hornet and Enterprise
carrier groups located north of
the New Hebrides: “Attack Repeat
Attack.”

Early on 26 October, American
SBDs located the Japanese carriers at
about the same time Japanese scout
planes spotted the American carriers.
The Japanese Zuiho’s flight deck was
holed by the scout bombers, cancelling
flight operations, but the other
three enemy carriers launched strikes.
The two air armadas tangled as each
strove to reach the other’s carriers.
The Hornet was hit repeatedly by
bombs and torpedoes; two Japanese
pilots also crashed their planes on
board. The damage to the ship was
so extensive, the Hornet was abandoned
and sunk. The Enterprise, the
battleship South Dakota, the light
cruiser San Juan (CL 54), and the
destroyer Smith (DD 378) were also
hit; the destroyer Porter (DD 356)
was sunk. On the Japanese side, no
ships were sunk, but three carriers
and two destroyers were damaged.
One hundred Japanese planes were
lost; 74 U.S. planes went down.
Taken together, the results of the Battle
of Santa Cruz were a standoff.
The Japanese naval leaders might
have continued their attacks, but instead,40
disheartened by the defeat of
their ground forces on Guadalcanal,
withdrew to attack another day.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 74093

Marine engineers repair a flood-damaged Lunga River bridge washed out during
a period when 8 inches of rain fell in 24 hours and the river rose 7 feet above normal.

The departure of the enemy naval
force marked a period in which substantial
reinforcements reached the
island. The headquarters of the 2d
Marines had finally found transport
space to come up from Espiritu Santo
and on 29 and 30 October, Colonel
Arthur moved his regiment from
Tulagi to Guadalcanal, exchanging
his 1st and 2d Battalions for the well-blooded
3d, which took up the Tulagi
duties. The 2d Marines’ battalions at
Tulagi had performed the very necessary
task of scouting and securing all
the small islands of the Florida group
while they had camped, frustrated,
watching the battles across Sealark
Channel. The men now would no
longer be spectators at the big show.

On 2 November, planes from
VMSB-132 and VMF-211 flew into
the Cactus fields from New Caledonia.
MAG-11 squadrons moved forward
from New Caledonia to
Espiritu Santo to be closer to the battle
scene; the flight echelons now
could operate forward to Guadalcanal
and with relative ease. On the
ground side, two batteries of 155mm
guns, one Army and one Marine,
landed on 2 November, providing
Vandegrift with his first artillery
units capable of matching the enemy’s
long-range 150mm guns. On the
4th and 5th, the 8th Marines
(Colonel Richard H. Jeschke) arrived
from American Samoa. The full-strength
regiment, reinforced by the
75mm howitzers of the 1st Battalion,
10th Marines, added another 4,000
men to the defending forces. All the
fresh troops reflected a renewed emphasis
at all levels of command on
making sure Guadalcanal would be
held. The reinforcement-replacement
pipeline was being filled. In the offing
as part of the Guadalcanal
defending force were the rest of the
Americal Division, the remainder of
the 2d Marine Division, and the Army’s
25th Infantry Division, then in
Hawaii. More planes of every type
and from Allied as well as American
sources were slated to reinforce and
replace the battered and battle-weary
Cactus veterans.

The impetus for the heightened
pace of reinforcement had been
provided by President Roosevelt.
Cutting through the myriad demands
for American forces worldwide, he
had told each of the Joint Chiefs on
24 October that Guadalcanal must be
reinforced, and without delay.

On the island, the pace of operations
did not slacken after the
Maruyama offensive was beaten
back. General Vandegrift wanted to
clear the area immediately west of
the Matanikau of all Japanese troops,
forestalling, if he could, another
buildup of attacking forces. Admiral
Tanaka’s Tokyo Express was still
operating and despite punishing attacks
by Cactus aircraft and new and
deadly opponents, American motor
torpedo boats, now based at Tulagi.

On 1 November, the 5th Marines,
backed up by the newly arrived 2d
Marines, attacked across bridges engineers
had laid over the Matanikau41
during the previous night. Inland,
Colonel Whaling led his scout-snipers
and the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, in
a screening movement to protect the
flank of the main attack. Opposition
was fierce in the shore area where the
1st Battalion, 5th, drove forward
toward Point Cruz, but inland the 2d
Battalion and Whaling’s group encountered
slight opposition. By nightfall,
when the Marines dug in, it was
clear that the only sizable enemy
force was in the Point Cruz area. In
the days bitter fighting, Corporal
Anthony Casamento, a badly
wounded machine gun squad leader
in Edson’s 1st Battalion, had so distinguished
himself that he was
recommended for a Navy Cross;
many years later, in August 1980,
President Jimmy Carter approved the
award of the Medal of Honor in its
stead.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 56749

2dLt Mitchell Paige, third from left, and PltSgt John Basilone, extreme right, received
the Medal of Honor at a parade at Camp Balcombe, Australia, on 21 May 1943.
MajGen Vandegrift, left, received his medal in a White House ceremony the previous
5 February, while Col Merritt A. Edson was decorated 31 December 1943. Note
the 1st Marine Division patches on the right shoulders of each participant.

On the 2d, the attack continued
with the reserve 3d Battalion moving
into the fight and all three 5th
Marines units moving to surround
the enemy defenders. On 3 November,
the Japanese pocket just west of
the base at Point Cruz was eliminated;
well over 300 enemy had been
killed. Elsewhere, the attacking Marines
had encountered spotty
resistance and advanced slowly
across difficult terrain to a point
about 1,000 yards beyond the 5th
Marines’ action. There, just as the
offensive’s objectives seemed well in
hand, the advance was halted. Again,
the intelligence that a massive enemy
reinforcement attempt was pending
forced Vandegrift to pull back
most of his men to safeguard the all-important
airfield perimeter. This
time, however, he left a regiment to
outpost the ground that had been
gained, Colonel Arthur’s 2d Marines,
reinforced by the Army’s 1st Battalion,
164th Infantry.

Emphasizing the need for caution
in Vandegrift’s mind was the fact that
the Japanese were again discovered
in strength east of the perimeter. On
3 November, Lieutenant Colonel
Hanneken’s 2d Battalion, 7th Marines,
on a reconnaissance in force
towards Koli Point, could see the
Japanese ships clustered near Tetere,
eight miles from the perimeter. His
Marines encountered strong Japanese
resistance from obviously fresh42
troops and he began to pull back. A
regiment of the enemy’s 38th Division
had landed, as Hyakutake experimented
with a Japanese
Navy-promoted scheme of attacking
the perimeter from both flanks.

Marine Corps Historical Photo Collection

In a White House ceremony, former Cpl Anthony Casamento, a machine gun squad
leader in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, was decorated by President Jimmy Carter
on 22 August 1980, 38 years after the battle for Guadalcanal. Looking on are
Casarnento’s wife and daughters and Gen Robert H. Barrow, Marine Commandant.

As Hanneken’s battalion executed
a fighting withdrawal along the
beach, it began to receive fire from
the jungle inland, too. A rescue force
was soon put together under General
Rupertus: two tank companies, the
1st Battalion, 7th Marines, and the
2d and 3d Battalions of the 164th.
The Japanese troops, members of the
38th Division regiment and remnants
of Kawaguchi’s brigade, fought
doggedly to hold their ground as the
Marines drove forward along the
coast and the soldiers attempted to
outflank the enemy in the jungle. The
running battle continued for days,
supported by Cactus air, naval gunfire,
and the newly landed 155mm
guns.

The enemy commander received
new orders as he was struggling to
hold off the Americans. He was to
break off the action, move inland,
and march to rejoin the main
Japanese forces west of the perimeter,
a tall order to fulfill. The two-pronged
attack scheme had been
abandoned. The Japanese managed
the first part; on the 11th the enemy
force found a gap in the 164th’s line
and broke through along a meandering
jungle stream. Behind they left
450 dead over the course of a seven-day
battle; the Marines and soldiers
had lost 40 dead and 120 wounded.

Essentially, the Japanese who
broke out of the encircling Americans
escaped from the frying pan
only to fall into the fire. Admiral
Turner finally had been able to effect
one of his several schemes for alternative
landings and beachheads, all
of which General Vandegrift vehemently
opposed. At Aola Bay, 40
miles east of the main perimeter, the
Navy put an airfield construction
and defense force ashore on 4
November. Then, while the Japanese
were still battling the Marines near
Tetere, Vandegrift was able to persuade
Turner to detach part of this
landing force, the 2d Raider Battalion,
to sweep west, to discover and
destroy any enemy forces it encountered.

Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson’s
raider battalion already had
seen action before it reached Guadalcanal.
Two companies had reinforced
the defenders of Midway Island
when the Japanese attacked there in
June. The rest of the battalion had
landed from submarines on Makin
Island in the Gilberts on 17–18 August,
destroying the garrison there.
For his part in the fighting on Makin,
Sergeant Clyde Thomason had been
awarded a Medal of Honor posthumously,
the first Marine enlisted man
to receive his country’s highest award
in World War II.

In its march from Aola Bay, the 2d
Raider Battalion encountered the
Japanese who were attempting to
retreat to the west. On 12 November,
the raiders beat off attacks by two
enemy companies and then relentlessly
pursued the Japanese, fighting
a series of small actions over the next
five days before they contacted the
main Japanese body. From 17
November to 4 December, when the
raiders finally came down out of the
jungled ridges into the perimeter,
Carlson’s men harried the retreating43
enemy. They killed nearly 500
Japanese. Their own losses were 16
killed and 18 wounded.

The Aola Bay venture, which had
provided the 2d Raider Battalion a
starting point for its month-long jungle
campaign, proved a bust. The site
chosen for a new airfield was unsuitable,
too wet and unstable, and
the whole force moved to Koli Point
in early December, where another
airfield eventually was constructed.

The buildup on Guadalcanal continued,
by both sides. On 11 November,
guarded by a cruiser-destroyer
covering force, a convoy ran in carrying
the 182d Infantry, another regiment
of the Americal Division. The
ships were pounded by enemy bombers
and three transports were hit,
but the men landed. General Vandegrift
needed the new men badly.
His veterans were truly ready for
replacement; more than a thousand
new cases of malaria and related diseases
were reported each week. The
Japanese who had been on the island
any length of time were no better off;
they were, in fact, in worse shape.
Medical supplies and rations were in
short supply. The whole thrust of the
Japanese reinforcement effort continued
to be to get troops and combat
equipment ashore. The idea
prevailed in Tokyo, despite all evidence
to the contrary, that one overwhelming
coordinated assault would
crush the American resistance. The
enemy drive to take Port Moresby on
New Guinea was put on hold to concentrate
all efforts on driving the
Americans off of Guadalcanal.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 51728

Native guides lead 2d Raider Battalion Marines on a combat/reconnaissance
patrol behind Japanese lines. The patrol
lasted for less than a month, during which the Marines covered
150 miles and fought more than a dozen actions.

On 12 November, a multifaceted
Japanese naval force converged on
Guadalcanal to cover the landing of
the main body of the 38th Division.
Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan’s
cruisers and destroyers, the close-in
protection for the 182d’s transports,
moved to stop the enemy. Coastwatcher
and scout plane sightings
and radio traffic intercepts had identified
two battleships, two carriers,
four cruisers, and a host of destroyers
all headed toward Guadalcanal.
A bombardment group led by the
battleships Hiei and Kirishima, with
the light cruiser Nagura, and 15 destroyers
spearheaded the attack.
Shortly after midnight, near Savo Island,
Callaghan’s cruisers picked up
the Japanese on radar and continued
to close. The battle was joined at
such short range that each side fired
at times on their own ships. Callaghan’s
flagship, the San Francisco,
was hit 15 times, Callaghan was
killed, and the ship had to limp away.
The cruiser Atlanta (CL 104) was
also hit and set afire. Rear Admiral
Norman Scott, who was on board,
was killed. Despite the hammering
by Japanese fire, the Americans held
and continued fighting. The battleship
Hiei, hit by more than 80 shells,
retired and with it went the rest of
the bombardment force. Three destroyers
were sunk and four others
damaged.

Department of Defense (Navy) Photos 80-G-20824 and 80-G-21099

In the great naval Battle of Guadalcanal, 12–15 November,
RAdm Daniel J. Callaghan was killed when his flagship, the
heavy cruiser San Francisco (CA 38) took 15 major hits and
was forced to limp away in the dark from the scene of action.

The Americans had accomplished
their purpose; they had forced the44
Japanese to turn back. The cost was
high. Two antiaircraft cruisers, the
Atlanta and the Juneau (CL 52), were
sunk; four destroyers, the Barton
(DD 599), Cushing (DD 376), Monssen
(DD 436), and Laffey (DD 459),
also went to the bottom. In addition
to the San Francisco, the heavy cruiser
Portland (CA 33) and the destroyers
Sterret (DD 407) and Aaron
Ward (DD 483) were damaged. Only
one destroyer of the 13 American
ships engaged, the Fletcher (DD 445),
was unscathed when the survivors retired
to the New Hebrides.

With daylight came the Cactus
bombers and fighters; they found the
crippled Hiei and pounded it mercilessly.
On the 14th the Japanese were
forced to scuttle it. Admiral Halsey
ordered his only surviving carrier,
the Enterprise, out of the Guadalcanal
area to get it out of reach of
Japanese aircraft and sent his battleships
Washington (BB 56) and South
Dakota (BB 55) with four escorting
destroyers north to meet the
Japanese. Some of the Enterprise’s
planes flew in to Henderson Field to
help even the odds.

On 14 November Cactus and Enterprise
flyers found a Japanese
cruiser-destroyer force that had
pounded the island on the night of
13 November. They damaged four
cruisers and a destroyer. After refueling
and rearming they went after the
approaching Japanese troop convoy.
They hit several transports in one attack
and sank one when they came
back again. Army B-17s up from Espiritu
Santo scored one hit and several
near misses, bombing from 17,000
feet.

Moving in a continuous pattern of
attack, return, refuel, rearm, and attack
again, the planes from Guadalcanal
hit nine transports, sinking
seven. Many of the 5,000 troops on
the stricken ships were rescued by
Tanaka’s destroyers, which were firing
furiously and laying smoke
screens in an attempt to protect the
transports. The admiral later recalled
that day as indelible in his mind,
with memories of “bombs wobbling
down from high-flying B-17s; of carrier
bombers roaring towards targets
as though to plunge full into the
water, releasing bombs and pulling
out barely in time, each miss sending
up towering clouds of mist and
spray, every hit raising clouds of
smoke and fire.” Despite the intensive
aerial attack, Tanaka continued on
to Guadalcanal with four destroyers
and four transports.

Japanese intelligence had picked up
the approaching American battleship
force and warned Tanaka of its advent.
In turn, the enemy admirals
sent their own battleship-cruiser
force to intercept. The Americans, led
by Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee in the
Washington, reached Sealark Channel
about 2100 on the 14th. An hour
later, a Japanese cruiser was picked
up north of Savo. Battleship fire soon
turned it away. The Japanese now
learned that their opponents would
not be the cruisers they expected.

The resulting clash, fought in the
glare of gunfire and Japanese searchlights,
was perhaps the most significant
fought at sea for Guadalcanal.
When the melee was over, the American
battleships’ 16-inch guns had
more than matched the Japanese.
Both the South Dakota and the
Washington were damaged badly45
enough to force their retirement, but
the Kirishima was punished to its
abandonment and death. One
Japanese and three American destroyers,
the Benham (DD 796), the
Walke (DD 416), and the Preston
(DD 379), were sunk. When the
Japanese attack force retired, Admiral
Tanaka ran his four transports
onto the beach, knowing they would
be sitting targets at daylight. Most of
the men on board, however, did
manage to get ashore before the inevitable
pounding by American
planes, warships, and artillery.

Ten thousand troops of the 38th
Division had landed, but the
Japanese were in no shape to ever
again attempt a massive reinforcement.
The horrific losses in the frequent
naval clashes, which seemed at46
times to favor the Japanese, did not
really represent a standoff. Every
American ship lost or damaged could
and would be replaced; every
Japanese ship lost meant a steadily
diminishing fleet. In the air, the losses
on both sides were daunting, but the
enemy naval air arm would never
recover from its losses of experienced
carrier pilots. Two years later, the
Battle of the Philippine Sea between
American and Japanese carriers
would aptly be called the “Marianas
Turkey Shoot” because of the ineptitude
of the Japanese trainee pilots.

Department of Defense (USMC) Photo 53510

A Japanese troop transport and her landing craft were badly
damaged by the numerous Marine air attacks and were forced
to run aground on Kokumbona beach after the naval Battle
of Guadalcanal. Many enemy troops were killed in the attacks.

The enemy troops who had been
fortunate enough to reach land were
not immediately ready to assault the
American positions. The 38th Division
and the remnants of the various
Japanese units that had previously
tried to penetrate the Marine lines
needed to be shaped into a coherent
attack force before General
Hyakutake could again attempt to
take Henderson Field.

General Vandegrift now had
enough fresh units to begin to replace
his veteran troops along the front
lines. The decision to replace the 1st
Marine Division with the Army’s
25th Infantry Division had been
made. Admiral Turner had told Vandegrift
to leave all of his heavy equipment
on the island when he did pull
out “in hopes of getting your units re-equipped
when you come out.” He
also told the Marine general that the
Army would command the final
phases of the Guadalcanal operation
since it would provide the majority
of the combat forces once the 1st Division
departed. Major General Alexander
M. Patch, commander of the
Americal Division, would relieve
Vandegrift as senior American officer
ashore. His air support would continue
to be Marine-dominated as
General Geiger, now located on Espiritu
Santo with 1st Wing headquarters,
fed his squadrons forward
to maintain the offensive. And the air
command on Guadalcanal itself
would continue to be a mixed bag of
Army, Navy, Marine, and Allied
squadrons.

The sick list of the 1st Marine Division
in November included more
than 3,200 men with malaria. The
men of the 1st still manning the
frontline foxholes and the rear
areas—if anyplace within Guadalcanal’s
perimeter could properly be
called a rear area—were plain worn
out. They had done their part and
they knew it.

On 29 November, General Vandegrift
was handed a message from
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The crux of
it read: “1st MarDiv is to be relieved
without delay … and will proceed
to Australia for rehabilitation and
employment.” The word soon spread
that the 1st was leaving and where
it was going. Australia was not yet
the cherished place it would become
in the division’s future, but any place
was preferable to Guadalcanal.

[Sidebar (page 41):]

75mm Pack Howitzer—Workhorse of the Artillery

During the summer of 1930, the Marine Corps began
replacing its old French 75mm guns (Model
1897) with the 75mm Pack Howitzer Model
1923-E2. This weapon was designed for use in the Army
primarily as mountain artillery. Since it could be broken
down and manhandled ashore in six loads from ships’
boats, the pack howitzer was an important supporting
weapon of the Marine Corps landing forces in prewar landing
exercises.

The 75mm pack howitzer saw extensive service with the
Marine Corps throughout World War II in almost every
major landing in the Pacific. Crewed by five Marines, the
howitzer could hurl a 16-pound shell nearly 10,000 yards.
In the D Series table of organization with which the 1st
Marine Division went to war, and through the following
E and F series, there were three pack howitzer battalions
for each artillery regiment.—Anthony Wayne Tommell and
Kenneth L. Smith-Christmas

[Sidebar (page 45):]

The Japanese Model 89 (1929) 50mm Heavy Grenade Discharger

Born out of the need to bridge the gap in range between
hand grenades and mortars, the grenade discharger
evolved in the Imperial Japanese Army from
a special purpose weapon of infantry assault and defense
to an essential item of standard equipment with all Japanese
ground forces.

Commonly called Juteki by the Japanese, this weapon
officially was designated Hachikyu Shiki Jutekidarto, or
1189 Model Heavy Grenade Discharger, the term “heavy”
being justified by the powerful 1-pound, 12-ounce high explosive
shell it was designed to fire, although it also fired
the standard Model 91 fragmentation grenade.

To the American Marines and soldiers who first encountered
this weapon and others of its kind in combat they
were known as “knee mortars,” likely so named because they
generally were fired from a kneeling position. Typically,
the discharger’s concave baseplate was pressed firmly into
the surface of the ground by the firer’s foot to support the
heavy recoil of the fired shell, but unfortunately the term
“knee mortar” suggested to some untutored captors of these
weapons that they were to be fired with the baseplate resting
against the knee or thigh. When a Marine fired one
of these dischargers from his thigh and broke his upper leg
bone, efforts were swiftly undertaken in the field to educate
all combat troops in the safe and proper handling of
these very useful weapons.

The Model 89 (1929) 50mm Heavy Grenade Discharger
is a muzzle-loaded, high-angle-of-fire weapon which weighs
10-1/4 pounds and is 24 inches in overall length. Its design
is compact and simple. The discharger has three major components:
the rifled barrel, the supporting barrel pedestal
with firing mechanism, and the base plate. Operation of
the Model 89 was easy and straightforward, and with practice
its user could deliver accurate fire registered quickly
on target.

Encountered in all major battles in the Pacific War, the
Model 89 Grenade Discharger was an uncomplicated, very
portable, and highly efficient weapon operated easily by
one man. It was carried in a cloth or leather case with a
sling, and its one-piece construction allowed it to be
brought into action very quickly. This grenade discharger
had the advantage over most mortars in that it could be
aimed and fired mechanically after a projectile had been
placed in the barrel, projectile firing not being dependent
upon dropping down the barrel against a stationary firing
pin as with most mortars, where barrel fouling sometimes
caused dangerous hangfires. Although an instantaneous
fuze employed on the Model 89 high explosive shell restricted
this shell’s use to open areas, the Model 91 fragmentation
grenade with its seven-second fuze made this discharger
effective in a jungle or forest setting, with complete
safety for the user from premature detonation of projectiles
by overhanging foliage. Smoke and signal shells, and
an incendiary grenade, were special types of ammunition
used with this versatile and effective weapon which won
the respect of all who came to know it.—Edwin F. Libby

December and the Final Stages

On 7 December, one year after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
General Vandegrift sent a message to
all men under his command in the
Guadalcanal area thanking them for
their courage and steadfastness, commending
particularly the pilots and
“all who labored and sweated within
the lines in all manner of prodigious
and vital tasks.” He reminded them
all that their “unbelievable achievements
had made ‘Guadalcanal’ a synonym
for death and disaster in the
language of our enemy.” On 9 December,
he handed over his command to
General Patch and flew out to Australia47
at the same time the first elements
of the 5th Marines were
boarding ship. The 1st, 11th, and 7th
Marines would soon follow together
with all the division’s supporting
units. The men who were leaving
were thin, tired, hollow-eyed, and
apathetic; they were young men who
had grown old in four months time.
They left behind 681 dead in the island’s
cemetery.

U.S. Army Signal Corps Photo SC164898

Americal Division commander, MajGen Alexander M. Patch, Jr., watches while
his troops and supplies are staged on Guadalcanal’s beaches on 8 December, the
day before he relieved Gen Vandegrift and his wornout 1st Marine Division.

The final regiment of the Americal
Division, the 132d Infantry, landed
on 8 December as the 5th Marines
was preparing to leave. The 2d Marine
Division’s regiments already on
the island, the 2d, 8th, and part of
the 10th, knew that the 6th Marines
was on its way to rejoin. It seemed
to many of the men of the 2d Marines,
who had landed on D-Day, 7
August, that they, too, should be
leaving. These took slim comfort in
the thought that they, by all rights,
should be the first of the 2d to depart
the island whenever that hoped-for
day came.

General Patch received a steady
stream of ground reinforcements and
replacements in December. He was
not ready yet to undertake a full-scale
offensive until the 25th Division and
the rest of the 2d Marine Division arrived,
but he kept all frontline units
active in combat and reconnaissance
patrols, particularly toward the
western flank.

The island commander’s air
defense capabilities also grew substantially.
Cactus Air Force, organized
into a fighter command and
a strike (bomber) command, now
operated from a newly redesignated
Marine Corps Air Base. The Henderson
Field complex included a new
airstrip, Fighter Two, which replaced
Fighter One, which had severe
drainage problems. Brigadier General
Louis Woods, who had taken over as
senior aviator when Geiger returned
to Espiritu Santo, was relieved on 26
December by Brigadier General Francis
P. Mulcahy, Commanding General,
2d Marine Aircraft Wing. New
fighter and bomber squadrons from
both the 1st and 2d Wings sent their
flight echelons forward on a regular
basis. The Army added three fighter
squadrons and a medium bomber
squadron of B-26s. The Royal New
Zealand Air Force flew in a reconnaissance
squadron of Lockheed
Hudsons. And the U.S. Navy sent
forward a squadron of Consolidated49
PBY Catalina patrol planes which
had a much needed night-flying capability.

The aerial buildup forced the
Japanese to curtail all air attacks and
made daylight naval reinforcement
attempts an event of the past. The
nighttime visits of the Tokyo Express
destroyers now brought only supplies
encased in metal drums which were
rolled over the ships’ sides in hope
they would float into shore. The men
ashore desperately needed everything
that could be sent, even by this
method, but most of the drums never
reached the beaches.

Still, however desperate the enemy
situation was becoming, he was
prepared to fight. General Hyakutake
continued to plan the seizure of the
airfield. General Hitoshi Immamura,
commander of the Eighth Area
Army, arrived in Rabaul on 2 December
with orders to continue the
offensive. He had 50,000 men to add
to the embattled Japanese troops on
Guadalcanal.

Before these new enemy units
could be employed, the Americans
were prepared to move out from the
perimeter in their own offensive.
Conscious that the Mt. Austen area
was a continuing threat to his inland
flank in any drive to the west, Patch
committed the Americal’s 132d Infantry
to the task of clearing the mountain’s
wooded slopes on 17
December. The Army regiment succeeded
in isolating the major
Japanese force in the area by early
January. The 1st Battalion, 2d Marines,
took up hill positions to the
southeast of the 132d to increase
flank protection.

By this time, the 25th Infantry Division
(Major General J. Lawton Collins)
had arrived and so had the 6th
Marines (6 January) and the rest of
the 2d Division’s headquarters and
support troops. Brigadier General
Alphonse De Carre, the Marine division’s
assistant commander, took
charge of all Marine ground forces
on the island. The 2d Division’s commander,
Major General John Marston,
remained in New Zealand
because he was senior to General
Patch.

With three divisions under his
command, General Patch was designated
Commanding General, XIV
Corps, on 2 January. His corps headquarters
numbered less than a score
of officers and men, almost all taken
from the Americal’s staff. Brigadier
General Edmund B. Sebree, who had
already led both Army and Marine
units in attacks on the Japanese, took
command of the Americal Division.
On 10 January, Patch gave the signal
to start the strongest American
offensive yet in the Guadalcanal campaign.
The mission of the troops was
simple and to the point: “Attack and
destroy the Japanese forces remaining
on Guadalcanal.”

The initial objective of the corps’
attack was a line about 1,000 to 1,500
yards west of jump-off positions.
These ran inland from Point Cruz to
the vicinity of Hill 66, about 3,000
yards from the beach. In order to
reach Hill 66, the 25th Infantry Division
attacked first with the 35th
and 27th Infantry driving west and
southwest across a scrambled series
of ridges. The going was rough and
the dug-in enemy, elements of two
regiments of the 38th Division, gave
way reluctantly and slowly. By the
13th, however, the American soldiers,
aided by Marines of the 1st
Battalion, 2d Marines, had won
through to positions on the southern
flank of the 2d Marine Division.

On 12 January, the Marines began
their advance with the 8th Marines
along the shore and 2d Marines inland.
At the base of Point Cruz, in
the 3d Battalion, 8th Marines’ sector,
regimental weapons company halftracks
ran over seven enemy machine
gun nests. The attack was then held
up by an extensive emplacement until
the weapons company commander,
Captain Henry P. “Jim” Crowe, took
charge of a half-dozen Marine infantrymen
taking cover from enemy fire
with the classic remarks: “You’ll never
get a Purple Heart hiding in a fox
hole. Follow me!” The men did and
they destroyed the emplacement.

U.S. Halftrack Mounting a 75mm Pack Howitzer
and a .50-Caliber Air-Cooled Machine Gun

All along the front of the advancing
assault companies the going was
rough. The Japanese, remnants of the
Sendai Division, were dug into the
sides of a series of cross compartments
and their fire took the Marines
in the flank as they advanced.
Progress was slow despite massive artillery
support and naval gunfire
from four destroyers offshore. In two
days of heavy fighting, flamethrowers
were employed for the first time
and tanks were brought into play.
The 2d Marines was now relieved
and the 6th Marines moved into the
attack along the coast while the 8th50
Marines took up the advance inland.
Naval gunfire support, spotted by
naval officers ashore, improved
measurably. On the 15th, the Americans,
both Army and Marine,
reached the initial corps objective. In
the Marine attack zone, 600 Japanese
were dead.

FINAL PHASE

26 JANUARY–9 FEBRUARY 1943

The battle-weary 2d Marines had
seen its last infantry action of
Guadalcanal. A new unit now came
into being, a composite Army-Marine
division, or CAM division,
formed from units of the Americal
and 2d Marine Divisions. The directing
staff was from the 2d Division,
since the Americal had responsibility
for the main perimeter. Two of its
regiments, the 147th and the 182d Infantry,
moved up to attack in line
with the 6th Marines still along the
coast. The 8th Marines was essentially
pinched out of the front lines by
a narrowing attack corridor as the inland
mountains and hills pressed
closer to the coastal trail. The 25th
Division, which was advancing
across this rugged terrain, had the
mission of outflanking the Japanese
in the vicinity of Kokumbona, while
the CAM division drove west. On
the 23d, as the CAM troops approached
Kokumbona, the 1st Battalion
of the 27th Infantry struck
north out of the hills and overran the
village site and Japanese base. There
was only slight but steady opposition
to the American advance as the enemy
withdrew west toward Cape Esperance.

The Japanese had decided, reluctantly,
to give up the attempt to
retake Guadalcanal. The orders were
sent in the name of the Emperor and
senior staff officers were sent to
Guadalcanal to ensure their acceptance.
The Navy would make the final
runs of the Tokyo Express, only
this time in reverse, to evacuate the
garrison so it could fight again in
later battles to hold the Solomons.

Receiving intelligence that enemy
ships were massing again to the
northwest, General Patch took steps,
as Vandegrift had before him on
many occasions, to guard against
overextending his forces in the face
of what appeared to be another enemy
attempt at reinforcement. He
pulled the 25th Division back to bolster
the main perimeter defenses and
ordered the CAM division to continue
its attack. When the Marines
and soldiers moved out on 26 January,
they had a surprisingly easy time
of it, gaining 1,000 yards the first day51
and 2,000 the following day. The
Japanese were still contesting every
attack, but not in strength.

By 30 January, the sole frontline
unit in the American advance was the
147th Infantry; the 6th Marines held
positions to its left rear.

The Japanese destroyer transports
made their first run to the island on
the night of 1–2 February, taking out
2,300 men from evacuation positions
near Cape Esperance. On the night
of 4–5 February, they returned and
took out most of the Sendai survivors
and General Hyakutake and
his Seventeenth Army staff. The final
evacuation operation was carried
out on the night of 7–8 February,
when a 3,000-man rear guard was
embarked. In all, the Japanese withdrew
about 11,000 men in those three
nights and evacuated about 13,000
soldiers from Guadalcanal overall.
The Americans would meet many of
these men again in later battles, but
not the 600 evacuees who died, too
worn and sick to survive their rescue.

On 9 February, American soldiers
advancing from east and west met at
Tenaro village on Cape Esperance.
The only Marine ground unit still in
action was the 3d Battalion, 10th
Marines, supporting the advance.
General Patch could happily report
the “complete and total defeat of Japanese
forces on Guadalcanal.” No organized
Japanese units remained.

On 31 January, the 2d Marines and
the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines,
boarded ship to leave Guadalcanal.
As was true with the 1st Marine Division,
some of these men were so
debilitated by malaria they had to be
carried on board. All of them struck
observers again as young men grown
old “with their skins cracked and furrowed
and wrinkled.” On 9 February,
the rest of the 8th Marines and a
good part of the division supporting
units boarded transports. The 6th
Marines, thankfully only six weeks
on the island, left on the 19th. All
were headed for Wellington, New
Zealand, the 2d Marines for the first
time. Left behind on the island as a
legacy of the 2d Marine Division
were 263 dead.

The total cost of the Guadalcanal
campaign to the American ground
combat forces was 1,598 officers and
men killed, 1,152 of them Marines.52
The wounded totaled 4,709, and
2,799 of these were Marines. Marine
aviation casualties were 147 killed
and 127 wounded. The Japanese in
their turn lost close to 25,000 men on
Guadalcanal, about half of whom
were killed in action. The rest succumbed
to illness, wounds, and starvation.

The temporary resting place of a Marine killed in the fighting
at Lunga Point is shown here. The grave marker was erected
by his friends. The Marine’s remains were later removed to
the division cemetery on Guadalcanal, and further reburial
at war’s end either in his hometown or the Punchbowl National
Cemetery in Hawaii with the honors due a fallen hero.

At sea, the comparative losses
were about equal, with each side losing
about the same number of fighting
ships. The enemy loss of 2
battleships, 3 carriers, 12 cruisers,
and 25 destroyers, was irreplaceable.
The Allied ship losses, though costly,
were not fatal; in essence, all ships
lost were replaced. In the air, at least
600 Japanese planes were shot down;
even more costly was the death of
2,300 experienced pilots and aircrewmen.
The Allied plane losses were
less than half the enemy’s number
and the pilot and aircrew losses substantially
lower.

President Roosevelt, reflecting the
thanks of a grateful nation, awarded
General Vandegrift the Medal of
Honor for “outstanding and heroic
accomplishment” in his leadership of
American forces on Guadalcanal
from 7 August to 9 December 1942.
And for the same period, he awarded
the Presidential Unit Citation to
the 1st Marine Division (Reinforced)
for “outstanding gallantry” reflecting
“courage and determination … of
an inspiring order.” Included in the
division’s citation and award, besides
the organic units of the 1st Division,
were the 2d and 8th Marines and attached
units of the 2d Marine Division,
all of the Americal Division, the
1st Parachute and 1st and 2d Raider
Battalions, elements of the 3d, 5th,
and 14th Defense Battalions, the 1st
Aviation Engineer Battalion, the 6th
Naval Construction Battalion, and
two motor torpedo boat squadrons.
The indispensable Cactus Air Force
was included, also represented by 7
Marine headquarters and service
squadrons, 16 Marine flying squadrons,
16 Navy flying squadrons,
and 5 Army flying squadrons.

The victory at Guadalcanal
marked a crucial turning point in the
Pacific War. No longer were the
Japanese on the offensive. Some of
the Japanese Emperor’s best infantrymen,
pilots, and seamen had been
bested in close combat by the Americans
and their Allies. There were
years of fierce fighting ahead, but
there was now no question of its
outcome.

When the veterans of the 1st Marine
Division were gathered in thankful
reunion 20 years later, they
received a poignant message from
Guadalcanal. The sender was a
legend to all “Canal” Marines,
Honorary U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant
Major Jacob C. Vouza. The
Solomons native in his halting English
said: “Tell them I love them all.
Me old man now, and me no look
good no more. But me never forget.”

[Sidebar (page 48):]

The ‘George’ Medal

The George Medal is legendary among 1st Marine
Division veterans of Guadalcanal. Only
about 50 were cast, in Australia, before the mold
gave out.

The medal commemorates the difficult situation of the
division during the early days on Guadalcanal, when ammunition,
food, and heavy equipment were short and the
Japanese plentiful. When the issue was no longer in doubt,
Marines had time to reflect on the D-plus-3 Navy withdrawal
in the face of increasing Japanese air attacks and
surface action which left the division in such a tight spot.

In the recollection of then-Captain Donald L. Dickson,
adjutant of the 5th Marines, the Division G-3, then-Lieutenant
Colonel Merrill B. Twining, resolved to commemorate
the occasion. Twining told artist Dickson in
general terms what he had in mind. Dickson went to work
designing an appropriate medal using a fifty-cent piece to
draw a circle on a captured Japanese blank military
postcard.

Dickson’s design was approved and when the division
got to Australia a mold was made by a local metal craftsman
and a small number were cast before the mold became
unserviceable. Those wanting a medal paid one Australian
pound for it and received a certificate as well. The medals
are now an even greater rarity than at the time. In recent
years, reproductions have been cast, and can be identified
by the different metal and a poor definition of details.

The obverse design shows a hand and sleeve dropping
a hot potato in the shape of Guadalcanal into the arms of
a grateful Marine. In the original design the sleeve bore the
stripes of a vice admiral intended to be either Vice Admiral
Robert L. Ghormley, ComSoPac, or Vice Admiral Frank
Jack Fletcher, Commander Joint Expeditionary Force, but
the final medal diplomatically omitted this identification.

Also on the obverse is a Saguaro cactus, indigenous to
Arizona, not Guadalcanal, but representing the code name
for the island, “Cactus.” The obverse inscription is Facia Georgius,
“Let George Do It.” Thus it became known as the
George Medal.

The medal’s reverse pictures a cow (the original design
showed a Japanese soldier with breeches down) and an electric
fan, and is inscribed: “In fond remembrance of the happy
days spent from Aug. 7th 1942 to Jan. 5th 1943.
U.S.M.C.”

The suspension ribbon was made, appropriately, of the
pale green herringbone twill from some Marine’s utility uniform.
Legend has it that to be authentic the utilities from
which the ribbons were made had to have been washed in
the waters of Guadalcanal’s Lunga River. Some medals were
provided with the oversized safety pin used to identify laundry
bags in Navy shipboard laundries.

Such unofficial commemorative mementoes are not uncommon
in military circles and recall, among others, the
Soochow Creek medals recognizing the defense of Shanghai’s
International Settlement during the Japanese invasions
of 1932 and 1937 which were inspired by the Military
Order of the Dragon medals of veterans of the China Relief
Expedition or Boxer Rebellion.—Brooke Nihart

Sources

The basic source work for this booklet is
the first volume in the series History of U.S.
Marine Corps Operations in World War II,
Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, written by
LtCol Frank O. Hough, Maj Verle E. Ludwig,
and Henry I. Shaw, Jr. (Washington: Historical
Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S.
Marine Corps, 1958). Other books used in
writing this narrative were: BGen Samuel B.
Griffith II, The Battle for Guadalcanal
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963); Gen
Alexander A. Vandegrift as told to Robert B.
Asprey, Once a Marine: The Memoirs of
General A. A. Vandegrift, USMC (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1964); Col Mitchell Paige, A
Marine Named Mitch (New York: Vantage
Press, 1975); Burke Davis, Marine: The Life
of Chesty Puller (Boston: Little, Brown,
1962); George McMillan, The Old Breed: A
History of the 1st Marine Division in World
War II (Washington: Infantry Journal Press,
1949); and Richard W. Johnston, Follow Me!:
The Story of the Second Marine Division in
World War II (New York: Random House,
1948).

The correspondence of General Vandegrift
with General Holcomb and other senior Marines,
held at the Marine Corps Historical
Center, was helpful. Equally of value were
conversations that the author had had with
General Vandegrift after his retirement. In the
course of his career as a Marine historian, the
author has talked with other Guadalcanal
veterans of all ranks; hopefully, this has
resulted in a “feel” for the campaign, essential
in writing such an overview.

The literature on the Guadalcanal operation
is extensive. In addition to the books cited
above, there are several which are
personally recommended to the interested
reader: Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow
(New York: Random House, 1957); Herbert
Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered (New
York: Dodd, Mead, 1982); John Miller, Jr.,
The United States Army in World War II: The
War in the Pacific; Guadalcanal, The First
Offensive (Washington: Historical Division,
Department of the Army, 1949); T. Grady
Gallant, On Valor’s Side (New York: Doubleday,
1963); Robert Sherrod, History of Marine
Corps Aviation in World War II
(Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1952);
Maj John L. Zimmerman, The Guadalcanal
Campaign (Washington: Historical Division,
Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1949);
RAdm Samuel E. Morrison, The Struggle for
Guadalcanal: History of United States Naval
Operations in World War II, Vol V (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1950); and a recent, comprehensive
account, Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal
(New York: Random House, 1990).

About the Author

Henry I. Shaw, Jr., former chief historian of
the History and Museums Division, was a
Marine Corps historian from 1951–1990. He attended
The Citadel, 1943–1944, and was graduated
with a bachelor of arts cum laude in history
from Hope College, Holland, Michigan. He
received a master of arts degree in history from
Columbia University. Mr. Shaw served as a Marine
in both World War II and the Korean War.
He is the co-author of four of the five volumes
of the official history of Marine Corps operations
in World War II and was the senior editor of most
of the official histories of Marines in Vietnam.
In addition, he has written a number of brief Marine Corps histories. He has written
many articles on military history and has had more than 50 signed book reviews.

The author gratefully acknowledges the permission granted by the Nautical and
Aviation Publishing Company of America to use the maps from BGen Samuel B.
Griffith II’s The Battle for Guadalcanal and by Doubleday Books and Jack Coggins
for use of the sketches from his The Campaign for Guadalcanal. The author
also wishes to thank Richard J. Frank and Herbert C. Merillat for permission to
reproduce their photographs.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the
World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines by
the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps,
Washington, D.C., as a part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance
of the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.

Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by
a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in memory of her late husband,
Thomas M. Watts, who served as a Marine and was the recipient of a Purple
Heart.

WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)

GENERAL EDITOR,
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank

CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information
Specialist; Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician

Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-0580

1992

PCN 190 003117 00