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By Root 468 0

landed in the midsummer of 1942, an event that caused most Europeans and Chinese to flee. The coast watcher, British district officer Martin Clemens, described the place for Leckie: “She was a poisonous morass. Crocodiles hid in her creeks or patrolled her turgid backwaters. Her jungles were alive with slithering, crawling, scuttling things; with giant lizards that barked like dogs, with huge, red furry spiders, with centipedes and leeches and scorpions, with rats and bats and fiddler crabs and one big species of land-crab which moved through the bush with all the stealth of a steamroller. Beautiful butterflies abounded on Guadalcanal, but there were also devouring myriads of sucking, biting, burrowing insects that found sustenance in human blood; armies of fiery white ants. Swarms upon swarms of filthy black flies that fed upon open cuts and made festering ulcers of them, and clouds of malaria-bearing mosquitos. When it was hot, Guadalcanal was humid; when the rains came she was sodden and chill; and all her reeking vegetation was soft and squishy to the touch.”

Clemens does not mention the big sharks, cruising just offshore and feeding on the bodies, American and Japanese, of sailors, soldiers, Marines, and airmen who fell, alive or dead, into the coastal waters. With about two dozen warships and other vessels of each side going down during the five-month battle, there was plenty for the thriving sharks.

It was the coast watchers who reported that the Japanese were building an airstrip there with Korean slaves, one that would endanger both Australia and New Zealand, our allies whose own forces were largely in action against the Germans half a world away, the famed ANZAC divisions fighting Rommel in North Africa. So they needed our help here on their own doorstep. The Japanese had northern Australia in their path, especially if enemy airpower and the Imperial Navy controlled the shipping routes and opened the way for their infantry.

The U.S. Navy had against all odds defeated the Japanese fleet at Midway, and now it was the turn of American Marines to do the job on land—if they were up to the challenge. On August 7 the 1st Marine Division landed by surprise and unopposed. Within a day it encountered and skirmished with Japanese infantry, igniting a terrible battle that would rage for the next five months on land, in the air, and on the surrounding sea.

2

Neither Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller nor Sergeant Basilone of his 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines had been on Guadalcanal when the 1st Marine Division invaded the island and began their grueling campaign. Fearful that the Japanese were still on the move elsewhere, perhaps against Fiji or the Samoan islands, elements of the 7th Marine Regiment, including Puller’s battalion, were dispatched in late summer to defend Samoa against possible invasion. That was where Basilone and his mates groused about having missed the fun, if that’s what it was, during those early weeks on the ’Canal.

Samoa wasn’t bad duty, though entirely antithetic to the Marine culture of attack. The Marines in Samoa weren’t anywhere near the enemy, nor were they about to launch a first offensive against the Japanese; their mission was strictly defensive. And why not? The Japanese were pitching a shutout in the western Pacific, taking one island, one battle after another, and why would they stop short now? No one in Washington or the Pacific knew just where the enemy would strike next. Samoa was certainly a potential target. So the Marines detached to defend it against a proximate invasion dug in and set up their gun emplacements, not only artillery and mortars but those heavy machine guns of Basilone’s platoon. When and if the Japanese arrived at Western Samoa, the Marines would be ready to defend the islands, to hold the islands. They’d stacked arms and surrendered at Peking, gallantly lost Wake, burned their colors and asked for terms in the Philippines; they weren’t going to lose Samoa without a fight.

Guadalcanal wasn’t yet on anyone’s charts. No intelligence had come in