thedrifter
10-12-08, 06:03 AM
Searching for fallen Marines
Three Radford University professors and a half-dozen students flew to the Solomon Islands for the latest search for the bones of Marines killed in the battle of Guadalcanal.
By Tim Thornton | tim.thornton@roanoke.com | 381-1669
People have been looking for the remains of the Goettge patrol almost since the last living member of the unit swam away from the beach at Matanikau shortly after daybreak on Aug. 13, 1942. A combination of bad information and bad luck led 25 Marines into the teeth of Japanese resistance in the early days of the World War II battle of Guadalcanal.
Some searches turned up bones, but not the Marines' bones. The latest search was conducted for 2 1/2 weeks in July by three Radford University professors and a half-dozen students.
The work really began about two years ago when Doug Drumheller, a member of a group called Greatest Generation MIA Recoveries, contacted Radford physics professor Rhett Herman. Herman and his students have done some work with ground-penetrating radar. They used it to study polar ice near Barrow, Alaska, last spring. Drumheller had a different project in mind for them -- finding the Goettge patrol.
Herman sent Drumheller to Cliff and Donna Boyd, anthropology professors and co-directors of Radford's Forensic Science Institute. Drumheller shared what he knew. He'd been to the island four times. He had aerial photos and maps and information collected through years of study. He had other people interested in helping, including John Innes, an Australian who lives part of the year on Guadalcanal and conducts tours of the battlefield.
"The problem, of course, was money," Cliff Boyd said. "How are you going to pay for a trip like this?"
The university spent about $100,000 for the travel and the equipment students and professors used in the search. They used ground-penetrating radar -- a deceptively simple looking cart-like device -- to look for anomalies beneath the surface. They also used Ohmie, a device that maps electrical conductivity, and global positioning system gadgets to mark where they were and where they were digging.
And they dug.
Test pits looked like graves. The team found old bullets and bottles and odds and ends, but many of the anomalies the equipment found turned out to be coral, not human remains.
Even though the team has been back for more than two months, its search continues.
"It's still going to take a while to fully process the data," Herman said. "We've got some tweaking, nudging, massaging and whatnot."
The university's investment bought what was almost certainly the most sophisticated search for the patrol so far -- and an education for six undergraduates that went far beyond how to conduct an archaeological dig.
Josh Van De Riet knew he wanted to go as soon as he heard about the trip in Cliff Boyd's class.
"So I went home -- I like ran home -- and wrote my letter of interest and I brought it back to him the next day," Van De Riet said.
His father was a Marine who fought in Vietnam. His father's stepfather fought on Guadalcanal.
"I freaked out. It was awesome," he said. "Having the opportunity to go and find Marines is something that means a lot to me."
Van De Riet had been to Mexico, Peru, Japan, Israel. Trevor Twyford, another student who made the trip, had only 24 hours between his return from Costa Rica and the trip to the Solomon Islands. Sarah Clark had never been out of the country.
"I was actually kind of scared to go out of the country, so I wasn't going to do it," she said. "And then one of my psych teachers pretty much told me I was an idiot if I didn't."
What Clark saw on Guadalcanal made her think of those television commercials that say you can make a difference for a child somewhere in the Third World for less than a dollar a day.
One of the most important things Van De Riet said he got out of the trip was "going to a developing country and being able to see, yeah, this is how people live. This is how most people in the world live.
"It was the little stuff we don't even think about" that made the biggest impression, he said.
About 60,000 people live in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, where the group was working. Many of those people are squatters who came to the city to find work, though the unemployment rate is more than 80 percent. Extended families live in huts surrounded by trash. Barefoot children play on the rusted hulks of cars and boats. Even in the relatively nice hotel where the Radford group stayed, sometimes the water didn't run. And sometimes it ran brown. Even when it ran clear, it wasn't safe to drink.
"You're kind of struck when you first get there because it's very, very hot, but there are fires everywhere," Donna Boyd said.
The fires are burning trash.
"I spent like an hour or so trying to clean up the beach one day," Twyford said, "just putting stuff in trash bags."
When he'd filled two or three bags, he asked some locals what he should do with the bags. They directed him to a nearby garbage pile. The next day it rained and Twyford saw the bags he'd collected ripped open and washed onto the beach.
The group had magical experiences, too. Swimming among the shipwrecks. Letting locals look through a telescope for the first time. Watching children who were hearing a violin for the first time. Taking school supplies to students who had none.
When they were about to leave, many of the people they met brought them gifts. The elderly caretaker of the church where the group did most of its work walked eight miles to deliver his.
They didn't find the Goettge patrol.
Cliff Boyd thinks they may have been looking too far from the Matanikau River.
"There are other possibilities, too," Donna Boyd said. "We heard lots of stories the whole time we were there of this person finding bones when they were doing construction and bones at their dad's house or their cousin's house or on the other island or whatever. Just constant stories.
"So there exists the possibility that just piecemeal, one by one, they were discovered or dug up, sold, given to the Japanese. When remains are given to the Japanese, they are assumed to be Japanese. They cremate them right there on site."
The crematory is part of a peace memorial.
Since more than 25,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the area, it's a good bet that most of the bones they've cremated were Japanese, but maybe not all of them.
Those aren't the only ways the patrol's bones may have been lost.
"If they were near the beach and buried that shallow," Cliff Boyd said, before his voice trailed off.
"They could have been washed out to sea," Donna Boyd finished her husband's thought.
Herman and the Boyds are trying to organize another trip, to continue the search.
Their students have already found some very valuable things.
"Friends," Van De Riet said. "Experiences. I got to really think about what it was like to be a Marine in World War II. I got to look at the ocean and think, 'Holy crap. People really did this.'
"This is not something that's just in books. This is not something that was just in some B quality movie.
"This really happened.
"People really died here."
Ellie
Three Radford University professors and a half-dozen students flew to the Solomon Islands for the latest search for the bones of Marines killed in the battle of Guadalcanal.
By Tim Thornton | tim.thornton@roanoke.com | 381-1669
People have been looking for the remains of the Goettge patrol almost since the last living member of the unit swam away from the beach at Matanikau shortly after daybreak on Aug. 13, 1942. A combination of bad information and bad luck led 25 Marines into the teeth of Japanese resistance in the early days of the World War II battle of Guadalcanal.
Some searches turned up bones, but not the Marines' bones. The latest search was conducted for 2 1/2 weeks in July by three Radford University professors and a half-dozen students.
The work really began about two years ago when Doug Drumheller, a member of a group called Greatest Generation MIA Recoveries, contacted Radford physics professor Rhett Herman. Herman and his students have done some work with ground-penetrating radar. They used it to study polar ice near Barrow, Alaska, last spring. Drumheller had a different project in mind for them -- finding the Goettge patrol.
Herman sent Drumheller to Cliff and Donna Boyd, anthropology professors and co-directors of Radford's Forensic Science Institute. Drumheller shared what he knew. He'd been to the island four times. He had aerial photos and maps and information collected through years of study. He had other people interested in helping, including John Innes, an Australian who lives part of the year on Guadalcanal and conducts tours of the battlefield.
"The problem, of course, was money," Cliff Boyd said. "How are you going to pay for a trip like this?"
The university spent about $100,000 for the travel and the equipment students and professors used in the search. They used ground-penetrating radar -- a deceptively simple looking cart-like device -- to look for anomalies beneath the surface. They also used Ohmie, a device that maps electrical conductivity, and global positioning system gadgets to mark where they were and where they were digging.
And they dug.
Test pits looked like graves. The team found old bullets and bottles and odds and ends, but many of the anomalies the equipment found turned out to be coral, not human remains.
Even though the team has been back for more than two months, its search continues.
"It's still going to take a while to fully process the data," Herman said. "We've got some tweaking, nudging, massaging and whatnot."
The university's investment bought what was almost certainly the most sophisticated search for the patrol so far -- and an education for six undergraduates that went far beyond how to conduct an archaeological dig.
Josh Van De Riet knew he wanted to go as soon as he heard about the trip in Cliff Boyd's class.
"So I went home -- I like ran home -- and wrote my letter of interest and I brought it back to him the next day," Van De Riet said.
His father was a Marine who fought in Vietnam. His father's stepfather fought on Guadalcanal.
"I freaked out. It was awesome," he said. "Having the opportunity to go and find Marines is something that means a lot to me."
Van De Riet had been to Mexico, Peru, Japan, Israel. Trevor Twyford, another student who made the trip, had only 24 hours between his return from Costa Rica and the trip to the Solomon Islands. Sarah Clark had never been out of the country.
"I was actually kind of scared to go out of the country, so I wasn't going to do it," she said. "And then one of my psych teachers pretty much told me I was an idiot if I didn't."
What Clark saw on Guadalcanal made her think of those television commercials that say you can make a difference for a child somewhere in the Third World for less than a dollar a day.
One of the most important things Van De Riet said he got out of the trip was "going to a developing country and being able to see, yeah, this is how people live. This is how most people in the world live.
"It was the little stuff we don't even think about" that made the biggest impression, he said.
About 60,000 people live in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, where the group was working. Many of those people are squatters who came to the city to find work, though the unemployment rate is more than 80 percent. Extended families live in huts surrounded by trash. Barefoot children play on the rusted hulks of cars and boats. Even in the relatively nice hotel where the Radford group stayed, sometimes the water didn't run. And sometimes it ran brown. Even when it ran clear, it wasn't safe to drink.
"You're kind of struck when you first get there because it's very, very hot, but there are fires everywhere," Donna Boyd said.
The fires are burning trash.
"I spent like an hour or so trying to clean up the beach one day," Twyford said, "just putting stuff in trash bags."
When he'd filled two or three bags, he asked some locals what he should do with the bags. They directed him to a nearby garbage pile. The next day it rained and Twyford saw the bags he'd collected ripped open and washed onto the beach.
The group had magical experiences, too. Swimming among the shipwrecks. Letting locals look through a telescope for the first time. Watching children who were hearing a violin for the first time. Taking school supplies to students who had none.
When they were about to leave, many of the people they met brought them gifts. The elderly caretaker of the church where the group did most of its work walked eight miles to deliver his.
They didn't find the Goettge patrol.
Cliff Boyd thinks they may have been looking too far from the Matanikau River.
"There are other possibilities, too," Donna Boyd said. "We heard lots of stories the whole time we were there of this person finding bones when they were doing construction and bones at their dad's house or their cousin's house or on the other island or whatever. Just constant stories.
"So there exists the possibility that just piecemeal, one by one, they were discovered or dug up, sold, given to the Japanese. When remains are given to the Japanese, they are assumed to be Japanese. They cremate them right there on site."
The crematory is part of a peace memorial.
Since more than 25,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the area, it's a good bet that most of the bones they've cremated were Japanese, but maybe not all of them.
Those aren't the only ways the patrol's bones may have been lost.
"If they were near the beach and buried that shallow," Cliff Boyd said, before his voice trailed off.
"They could have been washed out to sea," Donna Boyd finished her husband's thought.
Herman and the Boyds are trying to organize another trip, to continue the search.
Their students have already found some very valuable things.
"Friends," Van De Riet said. "Experiences. I got to really think about what it was like to be a Marine in World War II. I got to look at the ocean and think, 'Holy crap. People really did this.'
"This is not something that's just in books. This is not something that was just in some B quality movie.
"This really happened.
"People really died here."
Ellie