Hell Yes!

[thedrifter]

Hell Yes!

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By the time the Battle of the Ridge was over the First Marine Division had been on Guadalcanal for over five weeks and their health was deteriorating. Most Marines were eating only two meals a day consisting of Japanese rice and very little else. Many had dysentery, fungal diseases, and malaria, in spite of daily doses of the nasty preventative drug atrabrine, the side effects, some claimed, were as bad as malaria itself. Reinforcements and re-supply would be necessary if the Marines were going to hold what they had fought and paid so dearly for.

General Vandegrift requested reinforcements but delivering them would be dangerous. Finally, on 18 September, Admiral Turner’s ships arrived and the 7th Marines landed. On the same day a separate supply convoy delivered much needed aviation fuel and the first re-supply of ammunition since D-day. The cost of getting the 7th Marines to Guadalcanal was dear, the Navy lost the carrier Wasp to a Japanese torpedo, the battleship North Carolina was seriously hit and the destroyer O’Brien was so badly damaged that it sunk on the trip to dry-dock for repairs. This left the Hornet as the only whole fleet carrier in the South Pacific.

On the 19th of September General Vandegrift was made aware of something that he found disconcerting, the American public believed the Marines held most of Guadalcanal and were completely unaware of the conditions they were living and fighting under. As well, the general view in Washington was very far from the one the public held. The defeatism that had often been expressed by Vice-Admiral Ghormley and his camp, and that bristled General Vandegrift, was propagating like an insidious disease. Washington had begun to doubt the ability of the Marines to hold this precious real estate, and Vandegrift would not stand for this.

In an interview with Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for The New York Times, General Vandegrift pointed out that within one month they had stopped the advance of the Japanese across the Pacific. The enemy’s air and naval capacity had been seriously depleted with doubts of their ability to quickly rebuild them. There was every indication that the Japanese did not expect the Marines advance onto Guadalcanal and that it threw them off guard. When the correspondent asked Vandegrift if he would be able to hold the beachhead on Guadalcanal, the General resounded, “Hell yes, why not?”

The story was printed as an exclusive and Hanson Baldwin ran a series enlightening the public of the situation in the Pacific. He later won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

A word about defeatism, I dare say it was a pet peeve of General Vandegrift. Guadalcanal was not the only battle he would wage with limited resources before the end of his career. As Commandant of the Marine Corps he would go on, with the help of several other notable Marines, to defeat those in Washington and the War Department who wanted to emasculate the Marine Corps or eliminate them completely. That was another battle that many felt was impossible to win.

Ellie

[drumcorpssnare]

Adm. Kelly Turner had promised Gen Vandergrift five days of unloading supplies at the Canal. He pulled out after three days, saying he couldn't risk the fleet to the Japs. Okay, I'll concede that.
When the Leathernecks told Chesty Puller they were low on bullets and beans, Chesty had a classic reply. "The enemy has food, weapons, and ammo. If you want it bad enough....you'll take it from them!"
In a few cases, that's exactly what the Marines did! And their most prized war trophy...a Jap ice maker!

drumcorpssnare:usmc:

[thedrifter]

Guadalcanal: The Lull Before Matanikau

After the Battle of the Ridge there was a short lull in fighting on Guadalcanal. It was during this time that Colonel William J. Whaling, with the approval of General Vandegrift, began selecting Marines for his own unique style of sniper/scout training. Whaling was a consummate hunter and stalker; he traveled light and with stealth, and would stalk anything from big game to the enemy. His trainees were hand selected from those who shared his proclivity for hunting or who had a personal score to settle with the Japanese. Once the men had honed their skills on long marches with few rations and equipment, they were sent back to their regular outfits and new trainees were indoctrinated. As these scout/snipers returned to their units there was an immediate improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of the Marine patrols on Guadalcanal.

While there was certainly a lull in ground fighting, the routine shelling and bombing by the Japanese was unrelenting. “Pistol Pete,” the name given to the enemy long range howitzers located somewhere in the hills beyond the perimeter, continued to shell the Marines. “Louis the Louse” still flew over and delivered his daily midnight flare that signaled the beginning of a two hour bombardment from Japanese ships in the Sealark Channel, and along with “Washing Machine Charlie,” Louis alternated bombing the tiny area of Guadalcanal held by the First Marine Division.

The Marines knew they weren’t going anywhere, and so they took the opportunity of the lull to make the place their own. They scavenged crates, rice bags, corrugated metal, palm fronds and other materials, and built little shacks, lean-tos and tree houses to live in. They were digging in and making the most of what little comfort they could produce from literally nothing. Even the General lived in Spartan surroundings as you can see by the photo of his tent.


The fast flowing Lunga River had become the community bath tub, laundry and recreational area. Marines would line up along a huge tree trunk that had fallen into the river to do their laundry, and could be seen beating their clothes against the trunk at almost any time of the day. They had even put a diving board at one of the deeper sections of the river. Up river from all the bathing and laundry was the watering point where they drew the drinking water and purified it.

Still being on the defensive, the Marines continued to cut out fields of fire and dig splinter proof foxholes. For the non-military reader, a field of fire is an area in front of an earthwork that can be covered by weapons, or the area that a weapon or group of weapons can cover effectively with gun fire from a given position. With the Japanese able to bring in fresh troops at will, it was imperative that Vandegrift husband his resources and protect his forces as best as possible. They were readying themselves for what was to come.



My photos were shamelessly scanned from The Old Breed: A History of the First Marine Division In World War II, by George McMillan, and Soldiers of the Sea, by Colonel Robert Debs Heinl, USMC. If your library has these books you should take a look at them. I found my copies on eBay.


Much of my information came from three books, The Old Breed and Soldiers of the Sea mentioned above, and Once A Marine by A.A. Vandegrift and Robert B. Asprey.


If you want to get a head start on my reading then get Breakout by Martin Russ. Everyone points at the crying lady on the treadmill at the gym as I read it. Personally I want to go back in time and slap General Almond (or maybe worse), marry General Oliver Prince Smith (who really was a prince of a Marine) and comfort those Marines who died at Chosin as they pass.

Ellie