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001 - Chapter 1 - Top of the Ladder Marine Operations in the Northern Solomons · Marine Operations in the Northern Solomons

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of Top of the Ladder Marine Operations in
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  Speaker 1: the Northern Solomons. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Top of the
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  Speaker 1: Ladder Marine Operations in the Northern Solomons by John C. Chapin.
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  Speaker 1: Assault landings began for the men in the blackness of
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  Speaker 1: the early hours of the morning on one November nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty three. The troops of the third Marine Division were
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  Speaker 1: awakened before zero four hundred, went to General quarters at
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  Speaker 1: zero five hundred eight a tense breakfast, and then stood
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  Speaker 1: by for the decisive command land the landing force all
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  Speaker 1: around them, the pre invasion bombardment thundered as the accompanying
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  Speaker 1: destroyers poured their five inch shells into the target areas,
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  Speaker 1: and spotters and aircraft helped to adjust the fire. As
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  Speaker 1: the sun rose on a bright clear day, the word
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  Speaker 1: came at zero seven ten for the first LCVPs landing craft,
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  Speaker 1: vehicle and personnel to pull away from their transport ships
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  Speaker 1: and head for the shore. A five thousand yard run
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  Speaker 1: across Empress Augusta Bay to the beaches of an island
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  Speaker 1: called Bogainville. Almost seventy five hundred Marines were entering their
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  Speaker 1: LCVPs with Coastguard crew and cosins for an assault on
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  Speaker 1: twelve color coded beaches. Eleven of these extended west from
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  Speaker 1: Cape Toraquina for about eight thousand yards to the Coramoquina Lagoon.
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  Speaker 1: The twelfth was on Puraada Island, just offshore from the beaches.
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  Speaker 1: The six beaches on the right were assigned to Colonel
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  Speaker 1: George W. McHenry's third Marines and Lieutenant Colonel Alan Shapleigh's
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  Speaker 1: Second Raider Regiment Less one Battalion, the five on the
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  Speaker 1: left and Peruada Island, where they objected of Colonel Edward A.
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  Speaker 1: Craig's ninth Marines and Lieutenant Colonel fred D Bean's Third
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  Speaker 1: Raider Battalion. As the men headed for shore, thirty one
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  Speaker 1: marine torpedo and scout bombers covered by fighters, came screaming
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  Speaker 1: in from their base at Munda, bombing and strafing to
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  Speaker 1: give the beaches a final plastering. At zero seven twenty six,
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  Speaker 1: the first wave touched ground, four minutes ahead of the
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  Speaker 1: official h hour. As the other waves came in, it
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  Speaker 1: was immediately apparent that there was serious trouble in two ways.
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  Speaker 1: A high surf was tossing the LCVPs and lcms landing
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  Speaker 1: craft medium around, and they were landing on the wrong beaches,
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  Speaker 1: broaching and smashing into each other in the big waves.
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  Speaker 1: By the middle of the morning, sixty four LCVPs and
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  Speaker 1: twenty two lcms were hulks littering the beaches. Three of
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  Speaker 1: the designated beaches had to be abandoned as unusable. Major
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  Speaker 1: Donald M. Schmuck, commanding a company in the Third Marines,
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  Speaker 1: later recalled how, in the mad confusion of the beachhead
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  Speaker 1: his company was landed in the midst of heavy gunfire
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  Speaker 1: in the middle of another battalion zone on the beach
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  Speaker 1: of Torokeina. Running his company on the double through the
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  Speaker 1: other battalion and the second Raiders zone across inlets and swamp,
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  Speaker 1: Major Schmuck got his men to the right flank of
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  Speaker 1: his own battalion, where they were to have landed originally.
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  Speaker 1: His surprise, battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hector Desaias, stared at
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  Speaker 1: the bedraggled new arrivals, exclaiming, where have you been? Major
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  Speaker 1: Schmuck pointed back to Cape Torokeina and replied, ask the Navy.
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  Speaker 1: The other trouble came from the Japanese defenders. While the
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  Speaker 1: ninth Marines on the left landed unopposed, the third Marines
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  Speaker 1: on the right met fierce opposition. A day deadley crossfire
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  Speaker 1: of machine gun and artillery fire. One Japanese seventy five
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  Speaker 1: millimeter gun sighted on Cape Torokina, was sending heavy enfilade
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  Speaker 1: fire against the incoming landing waves. It smashed fourteen boats
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  Speaker 1: and caused many casualties. The boat group commander's craft took
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  Speaker 1: a direct hit, causing the following boat waves to become
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  Speaker 1: disorganized and confused. Machine Gun and rifle fire with ninety
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  Speaker 1: milimeter mortar bursts added covered the shoreline companies landed in
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  Speaker 1: the wrong places. Dense underbrush coming right down to the
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  Speaker 1: beaches shrouded the defenders in their twenty five bunkers and
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  Speaker 1: numerous rifle pits. The commanding officer of the first Battalion,
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  Speaker 1: Third Marines, Major Leonard M. Spike Mason, was wounded and
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  Speaker 1: had to be evacuated, but not before he shouted to
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  Speaker 1: his men, get the hell in there and fight. Nearby,
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  Speaker 1: the executive officer of the second Raider Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel
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  Speaker 1: Joseph J. McCaffrey, was directing an assault when he was
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  Speaker 1: severely wounded. He died that night. In spite of the chaos,
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  Speaker 1: the intensive training of the Marines took hold. Individuals and
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  Speaker 1: small groups moved in to assault the enemy, reducing bunker
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  Speaker 1: after bunker, dropping grenades down their ventilators. For an hour,
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  Speaker 1: the situation was in doubt. The fierce combat led to
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  Speaker 1: a rye comment by one Captain Henry Appleton, the second
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  Speaker 1: comparing steak and eggs served on white tablecloths by Stewards,
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  Speaker 1: and three and a half hours and a short boat
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  Speaker 1: ride later, rolling in a ditch trying to kill another
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  Speaker 1: human being with a knife, The devastating fire from the
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  Speaker 1: seventy five millimeter cannon on Cape Torokeina was finally silenced
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  Speaker 1: when Sergeant Robert A. Owens crept up to its bunker and,
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  Speaker 1: although wounded, charged in and killed the gun crew and
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  Speaker 1: the occupants of the bunker before he himself was killed.
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  Speaker 1: A posthumous Medal of Honor was awarded to him for
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  Speaker 1: this heroic action, which was so crucial to the landing. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: on Peruata Island, just offshore of the landing beaches. The
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  Speaker 1: noise was intense. A well dug in contingent of Japanese
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  Speaker 1: offered stiff resistance to a reinforced company of the third Battalion,
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  Speaker 1: Second Raiders. It was mid afternoon of D plus one
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  Speaker 1: before the defenders in pill boxes, rifle pits and trees
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  Speaker 1: were subdued, and then some of them got away to
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  Speaker 1: fight another day. A two prongs sweep and mop up
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  Speaker 1: by the Raiders on D plus two found twenty nine
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  Speaker 1: enemy dead of the seventy Japanese estimated to have been
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  Speaker 1: on that little island. The raiders lost five killed and
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  Speaker 1: thirty two wounded. An hour after the landings on the
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  Speaker 1: main beaches, a traditional marine signal was flashed from shore
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  Speaker 1: to the command and staff still afloat. Situation well in hand.
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  Speaker 1: The achievement of the riflemen came in spite of the
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  Speaker 1: ineffective pre landing fire of the destroyers. The men in
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  Speaker 1: frontline combat found that none of the twenty five enemy
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  Speaker 1: bunkers on the right hand beaches had been hit. Some
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  Speaker 1: of the naval bombardment had begun at a range of
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  Speaker 1: over seven miles, and the official Marine history summarized the
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  Speaker 1: gunfire plan had accomplished nothing. Unloading supplies and getting them
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  Speaker 1: in usable order on the chaotic beaches was a major problem. CBS,
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  Speaker 1: sailors and marines all turned to the task, With forty
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  Speaker 1: percent of the entire landing force laboring as the shore party.
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  Speaker 1: They sweated sixty five hundred tons of supplies ashore. Simultaneously,
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  Speaker 1: the batteries of the twelfth Marines were struggling to get
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  Speaker 1: their artillery pieces ashore and set to fire. One battery
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  Speaker 1: in support of the second Raider Battalion waded through a
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  Speaker 1: lagoon to find firing positions. Amtraks amphibian tractors supplemented by
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  Speaker 1: rubber boats were used to ferry the men in ammunition
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  Speaker 1: to the beaches. The ninety millimeter anti aircraft guns of
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  Speaker 1: the third Defense Battalion were also brought ashore early to
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  Speaker 1: defend against the anticipated air attacks. The Japanese had been
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  Speaker 1: quick to respond to this concentration of American ships. Before
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  Speaker 1: the first assault boats had hit the beach, a large
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  Speaker 1: flight of enemy carrier planes was on its way to
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  Speaker 1: attack the Marines and their supporting ships. New Zealand and
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  Speaker 1: marine fighters met them in the air, and the covering
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  Speaker 1: destroyers put up a hail of anti aircraft fire while
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  Speaker 1: the transports and cargo ships took evasive action. Successive Japanese
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  Speaker 1: flights were beaten off. Twenty six enemy planes were shot down.
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  Speaker 1: The men in the rifle battalions long remembered the site.
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  Speaker 1: On one occasion, a Marine Corsair was about to pull
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  Speaker 1: the trigger on an enemy Zeke zero fighter set up
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  Speaker 1: perfectly in the pilot's sights when a burst of fire
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  Speaker 1: from Marine fifty caliber machine guns on the beach meant
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  Speaker 1: for the Zeke shot the American down. One of the
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  Speaker 1: riflemen later recalled that the marine pilot fell into the
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  Speaker 1: ocean and surfaced with a broken leg. We waited out
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  Speaker 1: to get him. He was ticked off, mostly because he
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  Speaker 1: missed the jab. In spite of all these problems, the
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  Speaker 1: assault battalions had by the end of D Day reached
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  Speaker 1: their objectives on the initial beachheadline six hundred to one
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  Speaker 1: thousand yards inland. One enormous unexpected obstacle, however, had now
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  Speaker 1: become painfully clear. Available maps were nearly useless in a large,
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  Speaker 1: almost impenetrable swamp with water three to six feet deep,
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  Speaker 1: lay right behind the beaches. And made movement inland and
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  Speaker 1: lateral contact among the marine units impossible. The night of
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  Speaker 1: D Day was typical for the ground troops. By eighteen hundred,
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  Speaker 1: darkness had set in, and the men all knew the
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  Speaker 1: ironclad rule. Be in your fox hole and stay there.
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  Speaker 1: Anyone moving around out there was a Japanese soldier trying
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  Speaker 1: to infiltrade. John A. Monks Junior quoted a marine in
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  Speaker 1: his book A Ribbon and a Star from seven o'clock
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  Speaker 1: in the evening till dawn, with only centipedes and lizards
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  Speaker 1: and scorpions and mosquitoes begging to get acquainted. Wet, cold,
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  Speaker 1: exhausted but unable to sleep. You lay there and shivered,
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  Speaker 1: and thought, and hated and prayed, but you stayed there.
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  Speaker 1: You didn't cough, you didn't snore. You changed your position
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  Speaker 1: with the least amount of noise, for it was still
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  Speaker 1: great to be alive at sea. The transports and cargo
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  Speaker 1: ships were withdrawn. There was intelligence that enemy naval forces
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  Speaker 1: were on the move. Sidebar Major General Allen H. Turnage,
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  Speaker 1: USMC alan hal Turnage was born in Farmville, North Carolina,
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  Speaker 1: on three January eighteen ninety one. After attending Horner Military
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  Speaker 1: Academy and then the University of North Carolina. At age
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  Speaker 1: twenty two, he was appointed a second lieutenant in the
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  Speaker 1: US Marine Corps. Sent to Haiti, he served with the
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  Speaker 1: second Marine Regiment from nineteen fifteen to nineteen eighteen, becoming
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  Speaker 1: a company commander in the Haitian Gendarmeriy. A captain in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. Turnage did get to France, where he commanded
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  Speaker 1: the fifth Marine Brigade Machine Gun Battalion. Home in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: teen nineteen, he was assigned to the fifth Marines at
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  Speaker 1: Quantico and became regimental adjutant and an instructor for the
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  Speaker 1: first Field Officer School nineteen twenty to twenty two. A
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  Speaker 1: major in nineteen twenty seven, Turnage had three years with
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  Speaker 1: the Pacific Fleet, and then he served with the US
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  Speaker 1: Electoral Mission in Nicaragua nineteen thirty two. He came back
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  Speaker 1: to Washington, made lieutenant colonel in nineteen thirty four and
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  Speaker 1: full colonel in nineteen thirty nine. He was director of
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  Speaker 1: the Basic School at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and in
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  Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen thirty nine he was sent to
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  Speaker 1: China to head Marine forces in North China. In summer
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen forty one, on the eve of the Japanese
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  Speaker 1: attack on Pearl Harbor. He returned to headquarters in Washington
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two. As a brigadier general, he commanded
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  Speaker 1: the burgeoning Marine base and training center at at New River,
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina. When the third Marine Division was formed in
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  Speaker 1: September nineteen forty two, he was named assistant division commander.
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  Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen forty three, Turnage was promoted
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  Speaker 1: to major general and selected to head the division. He
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  Speaker 1: then led the division on Bogainville and in the liberation
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  Speaker 1: of Guam, the first American territory to be recaptured from
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  Speaker 1: the enemy. After the war, he was appointed assistant commandant,
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  Speaker 1: followed by promotion to lieutenant general and command of FMF
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  Speaker 1: pak Fleet Marine Force Pacific. He retired one January nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty eight and died twenty two October nineteen seventy one.
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  Speaker 1: His awards included the Navy Cross, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal,
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  Speaker 1: and the Presidential Unit Citation, which his men received for
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  Speaker 1: both Guam and iwu Jima. End of Chapter one