Part 3

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 started 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 needed 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 17): The Coastwatchers

A group of fewer than 1,500 native Coastwatchers served as the eyes and ears of Allied forces in reporting movements of Japanese units on the ground, in the air, and at sea.

Often performing their jobs in remote jungle outposts, the Coastwatchers were possessed of both mental and physical courage. Their knowledge of the geography and peoples of the Pacific made them invaluable additions to the Allied war effort.

The concept for this service originated in 1919 in a proposal by the Royal Australian Navy to form a civilian coastwatching organization to provide early warning in the event of an invasion. By the outbreak of war in September 1939, approximately 800 persons were serving as coastwatchers, operating observation posts mainly on the Australian coast. They were, at the outset, government officials aided by missionaries and planters who, as war with Japan neared, were placed under the control of the intelligence section of the Australian Navy.

By 1942, the system of coastwatchers and the accompanying intelligence network covered an area of 500,000 square miles, and was placed under the control of the Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB). The AIB coordinated Allied intelligence activities in the southwest Pacific, and had as its initial principal mission the collection of all possible information about the enemy in the vicinity of Guadalcanal.

Coastwatchers proved extremely useful to U.S. Marine forces in providing reports on the number and movement of Japanese troops. Officers from the 1st Marine Division obtained accurate information on the location of enemy forces in their objective areas, and were provided vital reports on approaching Japanese bombing raids. On 8 August 1942, Coastwatcher Jack Reed on Bougainville alerted American forces to an upcoming raid by 40 Japanese bombers, which resulted in 36 of the enemy planes being destroyed. The “early warning system” provided by the Coastwatchers helped Marine forces on Guadalcanal to hold onto the Henderson Field airstrip.

The Coastwatchers also rescued and sheltered 118 Allied pilots, including Marines, during the Solomons Campaign, often at the immediate risk of their own lives. Pipe-smoking Coastwatcher Reed also was responsible for coordinating the evacuation on Bougainville of four nuns and 25 civilians by the U.S. submarine _Nautilus_.

It is unknown exactly how many Coastwatchers paid the ultimate sacrifice in the performance of their duties. Many died in anonymity, without knowledge of the contribution their services had made to final victory. Perhaps they would be gratified to know that no less an authority than Admiral William F. Halsey recorded that the Coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific.--_Robert V. Aquilina_ ]

[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.”

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 of 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.”