Eye Witness Account

“Operation Shoestring”

For more than a week, 82 ships of Task Force-61 steamed toward Guadalcanal.  Radio transmitters were silent.  Planes from 3 aircraft carriers scouted the seas for Japanese submarines.  Admirals and generals expressed satisfaction over the lucky weather: low-scudding clouds and tropical downpours to shield their movements.

Aboard the transports, 19,000 members of the 1st Marine Division, reinforced, played poker and got together for songfests featuring back-home favorites like: Blues in the Night and Chattanooga Choo-Choo.  They listened to the ‘know-your-enemy lectures [from officers who by and large had seen as much combat as their men – meaning, none at all.].

The Marines sharpened their bayonets, blackened the sights on their rifles and worked their machine-gun belts to prevent jamming.  And – they griped about the food, the heat, their mission…  On the eve of their D-Day, the loud speakers on board the USS George F. Eliot sounded: “ALL TROOPS BELOW DECK!”

Robert Leckie

Pvt. Robert Leckie, USMC, a machine-gunner and scout wrote:

“The men filed below deck with little of the accustomed horseplay, without the usual ineffectual insults hurled at the bullhorn that had ordered them down. Packs were checked for the last time, filled with mess gear, clean socks and underwear, shaving gear, rations – here a bible, there a crumpled photo of a pin-up girl… Now the men were banging the chained bunks down from the bulkheads, crawling into them fully dressed – no one removed their clothing that night.

“‘LAND THE LANDING FORCE!’ and the Marines started clambering down rope nets to the landing craft below. Ant-like they went over the side. They stepped on the fingers of the men below them and felt their own hands squashed by the men above. Rifles clanged against helmet. Men carrying heavy machine-guns or mortar parts ground their teeth in the agony of descending to the waiting boats with 30 or 40 pounds of steel boring into their shoulders.

“…the boats rose and fell in the swells, now close into the ship’s side, now 3 or 4 feet away. The men jumped, landing in clanking heaps, then crouched beneath the gunwales while the loaded boats churned to the assembly areas forming rings and circling, finally fanning out in a broad line and speeding with hulls down and frothing wake straight for the shores of the enemy.”

The date was 7 August 1942 and the planners of the assault could not foresee that Guadalcanal would prove to be the first of the island stepping stones on the road to Tokyo.

Pvt. Leckie would later write the book, “Helmet for my Pillow” and be portrayed by actor James Badge Dale in the HBO serie, “Pacific.”

James Badge Dale, as Robert Leckie

Click on images to enlarge.

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Navy Humor ~

 

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Farewell Salutes – 

James Anderson – Coroneagh Park, AUS, RAAF # 5873, WWII

Ralph Clark – Everett, MA; US Navy, WWII, coxswain

Robert Gewinner – Jupiter, FL; US Navy, WWII, PTO, gunner, Purple Heart, USS Porterfield

Noel Havelock-Green – New Zealand; RNZ Army # 461463

Carroll Horn – Nashville, AR; US Army, Lt., Korea

James McMillen – Locust Valley, NY; US Navy, Korea

Carson Shafer – Powder Springs, GA; USMC, WWII

Richard Souza – Hanoverm MA; USMC, Captain, Vietnam, Bronze Star

George Wilshire – Indianapolis, IN; US Navy, WWII

John Yuille – Flint, MI; US Navy, Vietnam

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