Hell in the Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Journey From Guadalcanal to Peleliu by Bill Sloan, Jim McEnery Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bill Sloan, Jim McEnery
Bay, Cuba. Until then, throughout 166 years of Corps history, the largest Marine unit had been a regiment.
Besides the Fifth, there were only two other active regiments in the Corps at this time. One was the Sixth, based on the West Coast and sometimes called the “Hollywood Marines” because of the bit parts they played in some movies. The other was the Fourth, which was based in China and ended up fighting in the Philippines when the war started. Most other Marines were in small units scattered around the world.
But now the situation was changing fast. One new regiment, the Seventh, was split off from the Fifth, and another one, the First Marines, was activated about that same time. The division’s artillery regiment, the Eleventh, was beefed up with new 105-millimeter field pieces to go with their old 75-millimeter pack howitzers.
The division was sure as hell in no shape to actually fight anybody at this point. All the companies were shorthanded, and none of them had functioning machine gun or mortar sections. We were short of everything, and what equipment we did have was left over from World War I. Those of us in the Fifth were called the “raggedy-ass Marines,” and we lived up to—or down to—that description.
By the time the Japs hit Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Corps was growing at a frenzied pace, and the raid on Pearl kicked it into an even higher gear. On April 10, 1942, the Seventh Marines—with Remi Balduck among them—sailed for American Samoa to defend it against an expected attack by the Jap “supermen,” who couldn’t seem to be stopped anywhere.
Just a day before the Seventh Marines left the States, our forceson Bataan—over 70,000 American and Filipino troops—had surrendered to the Japs. This left only our guys on Corregidor still holding out, and in less than month, they’d have to surrender, too.
I can’t tell you how much I admired those guys for the stand they put up. But my biggest heroes were the few hundred Marines on Wake Island who held out against a huge Jap force for sixteen days. They fought off a whole enemy invasion fleet and sank or damaged a bunch of enemy ships. I swore right then that I’d do everything I could to uphold the high standards they’d set for the rest of us in the Corps.
The British were catching it even worse in the Pacific than the Americans were. After they lost 180,000 troops at Singapore, Prime Minister Winston Churchill told President Franklin Roosevelt that “Fighting the Japanese soldier on land is like jumping into a pool full of sharks.”
T HE FIFTH MARINES were about to be next to take that jump.
On May 17, 1942, we went aboard the USS Wakefield , a refitted passenger liner formerly called the SS Manhattan . Three days later, we sailed out of Norfolk with a cruiser and four destroyers shielding us from German U-boats. We headed south through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, then took a hard right at the Panama Canal.
As we steamed southwest across the endless expanse of the Pacific, our cruiser and destroyers were nowhere in sight. We had six PT boats as an escort for three days. Then they disappeared, too. We were on our own.
Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, commander of the FirstMarine Division, and his whole division headquarters battalion were aboard the Wakefield . So we got the idea that—escort or no escort—wherever we were going was pretty damn important.
On June 14, after riding out a fierce storm in mid-Pacific, we docked at Wellington, New Zealand, where, it was announced, we were to train for six months.
Twelve days later, on June 26, the division received its orders: “Occupy and defend Tulagi and adjacent positions on Guadalcanal, Florida, and Santa Cruz Islands.”
Our debarkation date was initially set for August 1. Then it was grudgingly moved back to August 7.
So, instead of having six months to get ready for the first U.S. offensive ground action of the Pacific war, we were actually getting
Besides the Fifth, there were only two other active regiments in the Corps at this time. One was the Sixth, based on the West Coast and sometimes called the “Hollywood Marines” because of the bit parts they played in some movies. The other was the Fourth, which was based in China and ended up fighting in the Philippines when the war started. Most other Marines were in small units scattered around the world.
But now the situation was changing fast. One new regiment, the Seventh, was split off from the Fifth, and another one, the First Marines, was activated about that same time. The division’s artillery regiment, the Eleventh, was beefed up with new 105-millimeter field pieces to go with their old 75-millimeter pack howitzers.
The division was sure as hell in no shape to actually fight anybody at this point. All the companies were shorthanded, and none of them had functioning machine gun or mortar sections. We were short of everything, and what equipment we did have was left over from World War I. Those of us in the Fifth were called the “raggedy-ass Marines,” and we lived up to—or down to—that description.
By the time the Japs hit Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Corps was growing at a frenzied pace, and the raid on Pearl kicked it into an even higher gear. On April 10, 1942, the Seventh Marines—with Remi Balduck among them—sailed for American Samoa to defend it against an expected attack by the Jap “supermen,” who couldn’t seem to be stopped anywhere.
Just a day before the Seventh Marines left the States, our forceson Bataan—over 70,000 American and Filipino troops—had surrendered to the Japs. This left only our guys on Corregidor still holding out, and in less than month, they’d have to surrender, too.
I can’t tell you how much I admired those guys for the stand they put up. But my biggest heroes were the few hundred Marines on Wake Island who held out against a huge Jap force for sixteen days. They fought off a whole enemy invasion fleet and sank or damaged a bunch of enemy ships. I swore right then that I’d do everything I could to uphold the high standards they’d set for the rest of us in the Corps.
The British were catching it even worse in the Pacific than the Americans were. After they lost 180,000 troops at Singapore, Prime Minister Winston Churchill told President Franklin Roosevelt that “Fighting the Japanese soldier on land is like jumping into a pool full of sharks.”
T HE FIFTH MARINES were about to be next to take that jump.
On May 17, 1942, we went aboard the USS Wakefield , a refitted passenger liner formerly called the SS Manhattan . Three days later, we sailed out of Norfolk with a cruiser and four destroyers shielding us from German U-boats. We headed south through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, then took a hard right at the Panama Canal.
As we steamed southwest across the endless expanse of the Pacific, our cruiser and destroyers were nowhere in sight. We had six PT boats as an escort for three days. Then they disappeared, too. We were on our own.
Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, commander of the FirstMarine Division, and his whole division headquarters battalion were aboard the Wakefield . So we got the idea that—escort or no escort—wherever we were going was pretty damn important.
On June 14, after riding out a fierce storm in mid-Pacific, we docked at Wellington, New Zealand, where, it was announced, we were to train for six months.
Twelve days later, on June 26, the division received its orders: “Occupy and defend Tulagi and adjacent positions on Guadalcanal, Florida, and Santa Cruz Islands.”
Our debarkation date was initially set for August 1. Then it was grudgingly moved back to August 7.
So, instead of having six months to get ready for the first U.S. offensive ground action of the Pacific war, we were actually getting
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