August 7,1942. Caught by surprise, the Japanese did not at first oppose their landing. The Marines streamed in and unloaded their supplies until the Japanese navy finally counterattacked. After losing four ships, the U.S. Navy fled. The Marines ashore were abandoned, standing alone against an enemy that had never been defeated.
For weeks these isolated Marines fought off attacks by Japanese ground troops as Japanese air and naval power struck at them day after day.
The Marine commander, Alexander Vandegrift, rallied his men. They were Marines, he exhorted them, and “this will be no Bataan.” Fighting against seemingly impossible odds, living on two meals a day of captured Japanese rice, the Marines secured the island by December. Some 23,000 Japanese were killed; another 13,000 were evacuated. Japan had suffered its first defeat of the war.
And the Marines had won a place in the heart of America. Guadalcanal was a fight won by teamwork, but also by heroes, whose exploits became instant legends. Heroes such as Sergeant John Basilone, a rugged New Jerseyite who had enlisted in the Marines after telling his mother, “The Army isn’t tough enough for me.” With “Death Before Dishonor” tattooed on his arm, he had led eight hundred of his comrades in a nonstop seventy-two-hour firefight in October against several thousand Japanese, winning the fight that helped change the course of the battle and thus the war.
After the enemy had destroyed one of Basilone’s sections, leaving only two men still in action, the sergeant grabbed a damaged gun, repaired it by feel in pitch darkness, under withering fire, and manned it himself, holding the line until replacements arrived.
Later, with his ammunition running low and his supply lines cut off, the sergeant charged through enemy lines carrying a hundred pounds of urgently needed shells for his gunners. They remained in action and virtually annihilated the Japanese regiment.
For that heroism, Sergeant Basilone became one of the first enlisted Marines to be awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II. Offered an officer’s commission after touring the United States to promote the sale of war bonds, Basilone turned it down and asked to be sent back to the Pacific. “I wasn’t scared,” he said, in a quote that resounded among the younger troops. “I didn’t have time to be. Besides, I had my men to worry about.”
The Marines had stunned the Japanese and handed them their first military defeat of the war. But it was perhaps an even greater psychological defeat. Japanese troops had long been told they were racially and morally superior to the soft and materialistic Western man. Guadalcanal proved otherwise.
For the Marines, Guadalcanal revealed a disquieting truth: America’s War would be fought on the most primitive level, a war fought like no other.
In the fall of 1942 America was fighting two very different enemies.
The battles in North Africa were between Westernized armies who fought by the “rules.” Ernie Pyle assured his millions of American readers that there the Germans were fighting “a pretty clean war.” The German Panzer leader Hans von Luck called it the “always fair war,” and when, years later, the German radio-television network ORTF produced a film on the campaign, its title was The War Without Hate .
Gentlemen’s agreements suspended hostilities for the day at five o’clock each afternoon, and each side held its fire for medics to care for the wounded.
Combat was fierce, casualties were heavy, and passion ran high when fighting the Germans. But rules were followed and a sense of restraint existed in Europe that was absent in the Pacific.
The Marines headed for Guadalcanal had heard of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army over the years. In 1938 Life magazine published photographs, smuggled out by a German businessman, of Japanese atrocities in Nanking.
Nanking, capital of China, had fallen to the Japanese on December 13,
For weeks these isolated Marines fought off attacks by Japanese ground troops as Japanese air and naval power struck at them day after day.
The Marine commander, Alexander Vandegrift, rallied his men. They were Marines, he exhorted them, and “this will be no Bataan.” Fighting against seemingly impossible odds, living on two meals a day of captured Japanese rice, the Marines secured the island by December. Some 23,000 Japanese were killed; another 13,000 were evacuated. Japan had suffered its first defeat of the war.
And the Marines had won a place in the heart of America. Guadalcanal was a fight won by teamwork, but also by heroes, whose exploits became instant legends. Heroes such as Sergeant John Basilone, a rugged New Jerseyite who had enlisted in the Marines after telling his mother, “The Army isn’t tough enough for me.” With “Death Before Dishonor” tattooed on his arm, he had led eight hundred of his comrades in a nonstop seventy-two-hour firefight in October against several thousand Japanese, winning the fight that helped change the course of the battle and thus the war.
After the enemy had destroyed one of Basilone’s sections, leaving only two men still in action, the sergeant grabbed a damaged gun, repaired it by feel in pitch darkness, under withering fire, and manned it himself, holding the line until replacements arrived.
Later, with his ammunition running low and his supply lines cut off, the sergeant charged through enemy lines carrying a hundred pounds of urgently needed shells for his gunners. They remained in action and virtually annihilated the Japanese regiment.
For that heroism, Sergeant Basilone became one of the first enlisted Marines to be awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II. Offered an officer’s commission after touring the United States to promote the sale of war bonds, Basilone turned it down and asked to be sent back to the Pacific. “I wasn’t scared,” he said, in a quote that resounded among the younger troops. “I didn’t have time to be. Besides, I had my men to worry about.”
The Marines had stunned the Japanese and handed them their first military defeat of the war. But it was perhaps an even greater psychological defeat. Japanese troops had long been told they were racially and morally superior to the soft and materialistic Western man. Guadalcanal proved otherwise.
For the Marines, Guadalcanal revealed a disquieting truth: America’s War would be fought on the most primitive level, a war fought like no other.
In the fall of 1942 America was fighting two very different enemies.
The battles in North Africa were between Westernized armies who fought by the “rules.” Ernie Pyle assured his millions of American readers that there the Germans were fighting “a pretty clean war.” The German Panzer leader Hans von Luck called it the “always fair war,” and when, years later, the German radio-television network ORTF produced a film on the campaign, its title was The War Without Hate .
Gentlemen’s agreements suspended hostilities for the day at five o’clock each afternoon, and each side held its fire for medics to care for the wounded.
Combat was fierce, casualties were heavy, and passion ran high when fighting the Germans. But rules were followed and a sense of restraint existed in Europe that was absent in the Pacific.
The Marines headed for Guadalcanal had heard of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army over the years. In 1938 Life magazine published photographs, smuggled out by a German businessman, of Japanese atrocities in Nanking.
Nanking, capital of China, had fallen to the Japanese on December 13,
Similar Books
