ELEMENTAL PURSUITS OF SURVIVAL: THE 1ST MARINE DIVISION ON GUADALCANAL AND NEW BRITAIN
(Spine title: Elemental Pursuits of Survival)
(Thesis format: Monograph)
by
Dylan A. Cvr
Graduated Program in History
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada
© Dylan A. Cyr, 2009. Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition
395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada
Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-50213-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-50213-6
NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.
The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission.
In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these.
While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES
CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION
Supervisor Examiners
Dr. Brock Millman Dr. Jonathan Vance
Supervisory Committee Dr. Aldona Sendzikas
Dr. Jeff Hopkins
Dr. Andrew Hunt
The thesis by
Dylan Adam Cyr
entitled:
Elemental Pursuits of Survival: The 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain
is accepted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Date Chair of the Thesis Examination Board
n Abstract
This project is the first of its kind, where the concept of physical environmental adversity is applied to the history of the 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific, focusing on common riflemen while the unit provides the framework. Elemental Pursuits of Survival: The 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain argues that for the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain, 1942-44, environmental adversities were an essential component of both the experience of these battles, by the men who fought them, and to the functionality of the Division as an organization. This project challenges long-held beliefs in military history that the role of the environment is only mere background to human events. This project also challenges important concepts dominant in the literature, particularly that racism was the defining characteristic of the Pacific War. Another major implication of this project is that environmental adversities narrowed the individual Marine's scope of existence. While immersed in New Britain's rainforests, concrete immediacies became the individual's central focus. Environmental adversities emerged as one of two primary challenges, secondary only to combat in terms of mortality and potential trauma. Research is based primarily on correspondence with elderly veterans. Published and unpublished memories provided significant substance along with a few contemporary sources that have been unexplored until now. Archival research was conducted at Archives II of the National Archives and Record Association in College Park, Maryland and at the Marine Corps Audiovisual Research Archives and Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, both in Quantico, VA.
Keywords ~ World War II, The Pacific War, the war in the South Pacific, Veterans, Memory, Oral History, War and Memory, Military History, Geo-Military History, Environmental History, Cultural Geography, US Marine Corps, 1st Marine Division, 5l Marine Regiment, Soldier Experience.
in At some point in his tour of duty he subconsciously develops a fatalistic resignation, and thereafter concerns himself very little with the profundities of life. Though he may have an awareness of such things as honor and fidelity and eternity, he applies himself primarily to the immediate and elemental pursuits of survival: Where is the water and food? How do we get it? What's the best way to stay warm and dry? Who's shooting at us, and from where?1
1 James Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat (1998), 68.
IV Dedicated to
Melvin Cyr Royal Canadian Army Service Corps, 193 9-1945 France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany Acknowledgements
A distinctive thanks is given to all the veterans who responded to my inquiry for information, especially those who shared personal memories and engaged in a meaningful dialog so I could write this dissertation. A deeply appreciative thanks is due to Dr. Herschel Cox, Anthony C. Chillemi, Melvin Crathers, Ralph I. Evans, Donald F. Fall, Charles Frankel, Robert C. Shedd, George Peto, Jr., and David Slater. A special thanks to Jim Johnston for correspondence and memoir and to Leslie S. Harrold who copious writings were invaluable, and to Henry J. Paustian for continually answering my inquisitive emails. These two veterans gave life to my mental image of their wartime experience, although Harrold's insights are saved for subsequent projects. Three veterans passed away during the dissertation writing: to William Kapp, John B. Loomis, and Henry Paustian. The original research included veterans who participated at Peleliu and Okinawa. Since these battles are not in this volume, they are not cited here. Nonetheless, their insight was invaluable to this project and I'll continue to work for their history in subsequent projects. Thanks to John Hayes, Floyd E. Nighswonger, D. T. Hargraves Jr., E. Joe Marquez, Eugene Stramel, and James L. Quinn in this regards. Thanks also to Christopher Wright, Ret. Colonel USMCR, my integral connection to the Marine Corps, and to my advisor, Dr. Brock Millman, the University of Western Ontario, Department of History, who guided this projected. Thanks goes to Chris Speed at the University of Western Ontario, Department of History, for years of assistance. Thanks is given to Dr. Fred Allison at the USMC History Division, Oral History Branch, to Patrick Osborne and Tim Nenninger at the National Archives and Records Association, to Andre Sobocinski at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, to Tony Magnotta at the Marine Corps Audiovisual Research Archives, to Laura Lacey and James Ginther at the Gray Institute, to the staff at the 1st Marine Division Association, to Annette Amerman at the USMC History Division, to Elizabeth Mantz at Weldon Library, UWO, to John Ashburne in Kyoto, and to Chris Majewski for those arduous days on Okinawa. Financial support was warmly received from The Ley and Lois Smith Fund at the University of Western Ontario (via Professor B. Forester) and twice from The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation in Quantico, Virginia. Personal thanks are due to the following: to peers Matt Trudgen, Forest Pass, Joshua Perell, Jessica van Horssen, Teresa Iacobelli, Richard Holt, Liam van Beek, to friends Justin Boisvert, Robert Hall, Lee O'Neil, Benjamin Pottruff, Cenk Saracoglu, and Adrienne Byng, to Dr. Jonathan Vance and Dr. Aldona Sendzikas for years of tutelage, and to my family—sister Julia and parents Maria and Roger.
Sincerely,
Dylan A. Cyr
VI Roll Call
Veteran Voices:
Cited in this project, in alphabetical order:
Roy Alderman, Thomas Barry, Ray Bauml, Elliot Bauss, Dallas Bennet, Henry Berry, Norris Byron, Jack Cannal, Anthony C. Chillemi, Vincent Russell (Russ) Clay, Herschel A. Cox, Jr., Melvin Cruthers, Raymond Davis, Jim Donoghue, Ralph I. Evans, Donald F. Fall, Clifford Fox, Charles Frankel, William Hawkins, Bill Jenkins, James (Jim) Johnston, William Kapp, Robert Leckie, John P. Leonard, Jr., James M. Masters, George McMillan, Ore Marion, Henry J. Paustian, George Peto, Jr., Stanley Piter a, Warner Pyne, Irving Reynolds, Leonard Roaen, William Schwacha, Carl Scott, David Slater, Eugene B. Sledge, Lee Stack, Luman Slawson, Bob Stiles, Hubert R. Strong, Samuel Taxis, Richard Washburn, Bruce Watkins, Dean Winters, Ralph M. Wismer, and Carl Wood. Also included are General Alexander A. Vandegrift, several anonymous Marines, and even some Japanese voices. These men were overwhelmingly in the 5th Marine Regiment, but voices here cover several officers, raiders, corpsmen, artillerists, and two Defense Battalion veterans.
vn Table of Contents
Certificate of Examination ii.
Abstract and Keywords iii.
Epigraph iv.
Dedication v.
Acknowledgements vi.
Roll Call vii.
Table of Contents viii.
List of Appendices ix.
Chapter 01 — Introduction 1.
Chapter 02 — Call to Arms: Training to Deployment 28.
Chapter 03 — I, Jungle: The Grind of Guadalcanal 58.
Chapter 04 — Enter Plasmodium falciparum: Malaria on Guadalcanal 93.
Chapter 05 — The Microscopic Front: Disease on Guadalcanal 121.
Chapter 06 — The Reduction: Primordial New Britain 154.
Chapter 07 — Insufferable Days: Memories of New Britain 190.
Chapter 08 — By The Thousands: Arthropods and Animals 222.
Chapter 09 - Conclusion 256.
Bibliography 265.
Appendices 276.
Curriculum Vitae 280.
vin List of Appendices
Appendix A. 276. Summary of "Alphabetical List of Diagnosis with Total Number of Admissions and Readmissions for Each — 1st Marine Division Only— Guadalcanal" from "Annex X: Numerical Summary of Casualties in Units of First Marine Division (reinforced)."
Appendix B. 278. Environmental Agency versus Non-Environmental Agency - Modified Figures from "Alphabetical List of Diagnosis with Total Number of Admissions and Readmissions for Each, 1st Marine Division Only—Guadalcanal"
IX 1
Chapter One Introduction
Memoirist James (Jim) Johnston, combat veteran of the 1st Marine Division, was an elderly man when The Long Road of War was published in 1998. However, Johnston's memories of his wartime experiences in the 1940s were still sharp. Consequently, he recalled in detail the obscure island of New Britain. Essential to that experience was the influence of the physical environment.1 "Most of the days and nights it rained. What rest you got was generally in a hole full of water. Mosquitoes swarmed everywhere. If you swung your arm in a half circle, shoulder high, you would hit several of them. You always had prickly heat bumps. Leeches were everywhere, as were the black, scorpion like bastards whose sting was so potent."2 All these environmental adversities compounded over four months of campaigning in 1943-44. Johnston concluded that New Britain "was a muddy slophole, the most miserable physical conditions I've ever been in. Lots of pretty tough guys completely crapped out." Johnston continued to fight on Peleliu and Okinawa, yet, at the heart of his recollection about the tropical rainforests and swamps of New Britain was that the island itself hosted "the most miserable physical conditions I've ever been in." This project is the first of its kind, a large case study where the concept of environmental adversity is applied to the history of the 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific,3 focusing on common riflemen while the unit provides the framework. This project argues that for the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain, 1942- 44, environmental adversities were an absolutely essential component of both the experience of these battles, by the men who fought them, and to the functionality of the Division as an organization.
In this project, for brevity, "environmental adversities" refers to adversities of the "physical environment," as compared to a social or cultural environment. The physical environment is defined as the physical surroundings, conditions, and influences on an organism, in this case the individual men of the 1st Marine Division. "Nature" and "primordial," as used in this project refer to an organism's surroundings that lack long-term and/or major human interference and physical structures. 2 Paragraph citations from James W. Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2000 [1998]), 49. 3 The war in the South Pacific was seventeen months. It started with the battles for the Kokoda Trail in July 1942 and was finalized with the commencement of the central Pacific drive (specifically Saipan in mid-June 1944). Rabaul was neutralized in spring 1944, coinciding with the central drive. 2
The term 'environmental adversities' refers to any geological, meteorological, or ecological agent that produced significant change in the conduct, experience, and memory of war on Guadalcanal and New Britain.4 Memoirist and combat veteran Robert Leckie proclaimed that the 1st Marine Division faced two distinct foes: "the twin enemies of the Pacific, the jungle and the Jap."5 This project's focus on environmental adversities addresses what in the literature is the neglected twin, the jungle. A typical rendition of a World War II battle provides basic environmental data as part of the setting and background. Thereafter, human agency provides the central narrative while environmental factors fade. It is understandable that people are central to the history of people, of course. However, without the inclusion of this non-human agent, the full picture is less complete; in this case, the wartime experience of the 1st Marine Division while in the South Pacific. The history of the battles of Guadalcanal and the wartime experience for those who fought there, follows the major trends of the field of history itself. Starting with the social turbulence of the mid- to late-1960s, revisionist history brought into focus several social groups that hitherto had been neglected in the history of the US. Revisionist history covered several large sub-fields, most important of which was the "social triad" of race, gender, and class. Social history influenced military history, which up to this point was overwhelmingly top-down in approach, most directly through the creation of the sub-field of soldier experience. This new bottom-up approach focused on the social triad as it related to common soldiers and how the factors of race, class, and gender influenced their wartime experience. Neither the old nor the new military history devoted much space to the consideration of environmental factors. This project belongs in a third generation, or post-revisionist stage, of historians who are currently re-re-examining WWII. This project argues that environmental factors, more relevant in soldier experience than in traditional military history (which has adequately covered geological issues), are important but missing issues in the
4 "Ecological agents" refer to mobile non-human organisms, like single-celled organisms to larger animals. Non-mobile non-human agents, like most plant life, are also ecological agents but are typically treated in geological/geographic sections, due to their stationary existence. People are ecological agents too, but for this project, since the Marines are the central topic, they are differentiated from other physical environmental agents. 5 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 33. 3 history of WWII. The historiography of the Is Marine Division, Guadalcanal and New Britain, and the war in the South Pacific and the Pacific War generally, demonstrates this.
Historiography ~ In 1949 war-correspondent George McMillan published The Old Breed: A History of the First Marine Division in World War II. Years ahead of its time, The Old Breed followed the 1st Marine Division through the entire Pacific War. Working from interviews, official documents, and personal experience, McMillan combined a bottom- up perspective with a traditional unit history and produced the first comprehensive popular history of the Division. Since there was a significant focus on the average Marine through veteran memory, environmental issues entered into the narrative, typically as adversaries. Compared to subsequent histories, The Old Breed gave fair attention to environmental adversities, stressing how they caused misery, how they assaulted the physical and cerebral, and how the Division's efficiency was affected. However, as General A. Vandegrift wrote in the forward, The Old Breed was intended to "record briefly the major events" of the Division.6 Instead of criticizing The Old Breed's brevity, it is commendable how much McMillan covered in one monograph. To cover the operational, tactical, and social history of the Division for four campaigns was no easy task. The subject matter of The Old Breed was virtually all- inclusive and to cover all meant that nothing in particular was treated in detail. However, McMillan did establish a narrative for the Division while simultaneously offering countless venues for deeper exploration. In part, this project can be conceptualized as an off-shoot of The Old Breed, diving deeper into environmental influences. The Old Breed is the most important of all the 1st Marine Division's histories. When at an annual anniversary or reunion of the 1st Marine Division Association, it is more than likely that The Old Breed will be splayed out on a banquet- hall table, almost consistently with an elderly veteran or two pointing to a picture and commenting to a friend. The veterans refer to The Old Breed when they want
6 George McMillan, The Old Breed: The First Marine Division in World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), forward. 4
something verified. It is safe to surmise, and acknowledge, that McMillan's works, in turn, influenced the formulation of their memory of those battles. The year that The Old Breed appeared was also the year that the US Army published its official history of the Guadalcanal operation: Guadalcanal: The First Offensive. In 1949, military scholar John Miller, Jr., completed this thick history of Guadalcanal, ten years prior to his similar Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul, 1959, both for the United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific series, that mass of dusty green books on library shelves. Miller's two official Army histories compiled the operational contexts and tactical maneuvers, but reserved limited space for medical, meteorological, and ecological issues. Not so surprisingly, geological issues were fairly well covered in both volumes. It was recognized as self-evident to contemporaries and original historians that terrain features were inherent to tactical and operational realities. It is not that John Miller, Jr. failed to address topics like malaria, dysentery, rainfall, and other such environmental adversities. It is that they were not treated in the depth they deserved. But, could New Britain be expected to be well covered in such specific areas as ecological relationships when the very battle itself was hardly covered—four pages, with maps and pictures?7 To be fair, terrain entered this short discussion. "Behind the shelf was a swamp which made anything like rapid movement or maneuver completely impossible. Men floundered through the mud, slipping into sinkholes up to their waists and even their armpits"8 wrote Miller. Guadalcanal: The First Offensive was similarly written. The features of relevant terrain were sufficiently addressed, while meteorological and ecological issues especially were neglected. The Army could always contend that it was not finished with Guadalcanal and New Britain. As a series stretching over several decades, the United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific added a 1998 edition-nearly fifty years after Guadalcanal: The First Offensive-that centered on the organizational medical history of the Army in the Pacific War. The Medical Department: Medical Service in the War
7 John Miller, Jr., United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul (Washington: Historical Division, US Government Printing Office [hereinafter GPO], 1959), 289-294. 8 Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul, 290-291. 5
Against Japan, by Mary E. Condon-Rail and Albert E. Cowdrey, gave the Army a forum in which to delve into its troubled medical experience in the Pacific, particularly the Philippines. It concluded that disease was a formidable enemy and that environmental conditions created serious problems for units and the men. Despite this sensitivity to medical (and hence environmental factors), the text was basically an organizational history of the medical department and is limited in use for that reason and because it is also fairly generalized. As for the Navy, Samuel Eliot Morison's gifted writing provided extensive information on naval engagements, as well as considerable examinations of air and land elements relating to all major naval battles. Ecological issues, along with meteorological factors and terrain features, were never fully neglected—even if attention constituted one summary paragraph. Morison was a prolific writer, but his fifteen-volume history inevitably had to stop somewhere. The Navy did have a tremendous amount of history in the global conflict, operating in many oceans and spanning much of the planet. In that context, the presence of environmental adversities in the text at all should be praised. Nonetheless, the hole in the literature continued, even with the twenty years between Volume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 1955, and Volume VI: Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 1975, both volumes in the History of United States Naval Operations in World War II series. Concerning the 1st Marine Division on New Britain, roughly fifteen pages were dedicated to mostly the first three weeks of battle. Morison disagreed with the invasion of New Britain, but gracefully recognized that MacArthur did not have the "benefit of the historian's hindsight." Mixed with important but mundane lists of landing forces, Morison considered Cape Gloucester as the "one operation in which nature proved to be a worse enemy than the Japanese." His following explanation for the statement, however, was simply one long citation from McMillan's The Old Breed. As for Guadalcanal, the land coverage was somewhat comparable to Samuel B. Griffith, IPs 1963 The Battle For Guadalcanal; terrain never ignored, ecology and meteorological issues marginalized.
9 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume VI: Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 22 July 1942-1 May 1944 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), 378. 6
Robert Leckie's 1957 Helmet For My Pillow is the essential memoir for the Division's time in the South Pacific. It was the most important memoir until eventually being surpassed by veteran and memoirist Eugene B. Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (1981); popularized by Studs Terkel's 1985 The Good War (and Paul Fussell's early acclaims of the memoir). Instead of a comparison, though, the Leckie and Sledge memoirs should be thought of as two volumes of the same history. After campaigning on both Guadalcanal and New Britain, Leckie was wounded immediately on Peleliu (Sledge's first day was basically Leckie's last). Also Leckie was part of the original cohort that went through Tent City in North Carolina while Sledge was with the Division during occupation duty in northern China, now a separately published memoir.10 Jim Johnston's The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat (1998), however, rivals both works in quality and provides a refreshing voice concerning New Britain, Peleliu, and Okinawa. Aside from the detailed revelations about life from Parris Island to New Britain, Helmet For My Pillow's most important contribution is that it firmly established the concept of "the twin enemy" to the Division in the Pacific War, a term coined by Leckie (with the original concept introduced by George McMillan). Leckie went even further to claim that, at times, the war between the Marines and Nature superceded the war with the Japanese. The campaign for New Britain was three vicious weeks of high- tempo combat and then fifteen weeks of grueling patrols in a squad war defined and dictated by the rainforest. For the longer period, a time when combat took a backseat to interactions with environmental adversities, Leckie wrote that "it was the jungle and not the Jap that was now the adversary."11 He continued by asserting that "here the jungle and the men were locked in a conflict far more basic than our shooting war with the Japanese-for here the struggle was for existence itself."12 While McMillan had introduced the inclusion of proto-versions of social- military and geo-military history into print, Leckie pushed the point further and described the environment as a distinct and important enemy, an equal to the Japanese.
Please see Eugene Sledge's China Marine: An Infantryman's Life After World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 11 Leckie, 257. 12 Leckie, 258. 7
Leckie's venture into malleable concepts of the enemy presented the ecology of the South Pacific as something as malign as a Japanese soldier. He wrote about New Britain as an actual participant in his war. "I mean to say New Britain was evil, darkly
i -] and secretly evil, a malefactor and enemy of human-kind, an adversary really." An enemy of human-kind was somewhat hyperbolic, but as a wartime adversary, the assertion could not be clearer. However, Helmet For My Pillow was not an analytical history. As is the nature of memoirs, it was not expected to provide the larger contexts necessary to understanding how environmental adversities became so integral to the experience of the men and the unit. In 1958, the Marine Corps published the first of five volumes of the official operational history of the Corps in WWII; titled History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II: Volume I: Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal by Frank O. Hough, Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr. Five years later, in 1963, the second volume appeared, with New Britain being covered in Volume II: Isolation ofRabaul, by Henry I. Shaw, Jr. and Douglas T. Kane. As operational histories, soldier experience was not included in the narrative. Without that key element, there was little room for environmental factors outside the established, but marginal, importance of geological features. Still, when Volume I: Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal mentioned the word mosquito and anopheles only once each, the missing environment aspects could not have been better illustrated. Malaria was casually mentioned about a dozen times, however its treatment, excepting the passage on the New Hebrides, was never more than mere lip-service or as part of a listing of general woes. For the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, malaria turned out to be a crucial source of attrition against the men. It was an operational concern too, and so although these fine early histories should not be critiqued for missing approaches that were not yet common, it was odd to have this one medical/ecological factor so neglected, even at the time. The Marine Corps' official history of New Britain (1963) was heavily influenced by specific texts that preceded it. This was not a conspiracy, as the official historians noted that they consciously sought to combine the separate monographs that
Leckie, 257. 8 had been published in the late-1940s through the 1950s. Frank O. Hough, who had co- written the Guadalcanal volume, with John A. Crown, had published The Campaign on New Britain in 1952. The Campaign on New Britain was typically top-down and although it had a separate appendix focused on vegetation, written by a professional forester, the information was cursory. Levi T. Burcham, a captain during the war and Forestry Technician with the California Division of Forestry by 1952, simply described six types of climes on New Britain. Despite the appendix being titled "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations" there was little on the influence of flora for the 1st Marine Division and its men. Having a separate appendix meant that the role of environmental adversities, like the official history, were downplayed in the main text, although present in a minor way. One reason for this neglect is that these original historians, themselves almost always veterans, probably believed that environmental issues were self-evident. That 'every' man had a skin condition like jungle rot was not something thought desirable or tasteful in the literature, nor worth mentioning as every veteran already knew that fact. Also, the influence of environmental adversities was typically not recorded on paper. The official historians were overwhelmed with the sheer amount of paper records produced by the armed forces. Little of that paper record held information on environmental factors. Aside from Hough and Crown's original history for New Britain, a monograph on amphibious warfare also influenced the official history. Early Marine Corps history was particularly service-oriented and the historians of this small branch were focused on proving the utility and worth of the Corps at a time when military budgets were rapidly shrinking. Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl published The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: Its Theory and Its Practice in the Pacific in 1951, which provided much of the base for the doctrinal discussions of amphibious warfare in the official histories. In 1971, George C. Dyer's The Amphibians Came to Conquer replaced Isely and Crowl's work in importance; it was then superceded by Joseph H. Alexander's Storm Landings: Epic Amphibious Battles of the Central Pacific in 1997. These types
Like John L. Zimmerman, The Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington: Historical Division, Headquarters, US Marine Corps, 1949) for Guadalcanal. See text for further examples. 9
of books were not intended to cover the environmental aspects of an infantryman's war, but they did adequately cover geological issues, such as reefs, tides, beaches, and so on. These works have well covered the time on the beaches, and so this project deliberately gave the last phases of the campaigns more significant focus. In the early-1980s, there became a heightened sense of urgency to record the words of the WWII generation. For example, military scholar and veteran Henry Berry published Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II in 1982. Originally intending to cover all six Marine divisions in the Pacific War, Henry Berry admitted that "[pjurely by chance my interviews with men of the 1st Marine Division greatly outnumbered my visits with men of other divisions."15 Consequently, Semper Fi, Mac was a magnificent source for veteran memories on environmental adversities, especially since Berry himself, a Pacific War veteran, often pursued questions relating to "that little slice of hell surrounding each man."16 Although not specifically addressing environmental influences in his limited analysis, Berry often asked his peers to comment on the battle waged between the Marines and Nature. Berry's own disdain for the rainforest was apparent in his reflections: "the toughest jungle," "crummy as that jungle," and "that stinking jungle."17 In 1982, Herbert C. Merillat published Guadalcanal Remembered. Merillat was on Guadalcanal as a war correspondent, reservist, and member of the junior staff for the Division, working closely with top staff members of the 1 st Marine Division. Due to this constant contact with those that controlled the Marines, Merillat became the "in- house historian,"18 in his own words, of the Division while on Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal Remembered is a hybrid history and published diary of events from a civilian perspective about the top brass. Merillat had already published The Island, a 1944 short history of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal. However, the source material that Merillat relied on for that work was never rediscovered, "probably
Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 16. The 5th Division only fought on Iwo Jima and the 6th Division only fought on Okinawa, both in 1945. 16 Berry, 16. 17 Berry, 96, 97, and 106 respectively. 18 Herbert Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1982), 2. 10 destroyed in a periodic housecleaning at Marine Corps Headquarters." This explains the marginalization of The Island in the literature and perhaps the increased importance of The Old Breed (even though there were no citations in McMillan's work). The Old Breed had come to be the prized source on Guadalcanal, as opposed to The Island, but Guadalcanal Remembered offered a refined view from the top commanders, based on both personal and written records—those that were collected and carried off the island in Merillat's sea bag. In 1990, military scholar Richard B. Franks' finally published the long- researched monograph Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle. The long title's inclusion of "definitive" has raised eyebrows from Pacific War historians. Frank's monograph is the classic example of a military scholar's work becoming relevant to academia. By combining the perspectives of the US and Japanese, in conjunction with an equal covering of all three dimensions of warfare (air, water, land), Frank's impressive task succeeded fairly well. However, analysis was conceptually limited and virtually nothing new was presented. The Japanese perspective had largely come out with post-war interviews and in Samuel Griffith's The Battle for Guadalcanal (1963) which also covered the land war (as had Miller's 1949 official Army history). The air war was covered by Thomas G. Miller in his 1969 The Cactus Air Force and the sea war previously by Morison. Yet, the simplicity of one volume and solid, second-generation research made Frank's work, if redundant, a useful addition to the already large body of literature on Guadalcanal.21 In 1996, military-scholar Eric Bergerud published Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific in order to address the holes in the literature surrounding the South Pacific phase of the larger Pacific War. His exploration led him to realize that environmental conditions deserved significant attention, dedicating them their own, lengthy chapter "The War Against the Land." Bergerud noted that the "forbidding climate enveloped all the soldiers in the South Pacific. It would have made the theatre difficult had the terrain been benign. However, that was not the case. On the contrary,
19 Merillat, 3. 20 William H. Bartsch, "Operation Dovetail: Bungled Guadalcanal Rehearsal, July 1942," The Journal of Military History, 66 (April 2002), 444. 21 See also the (relatively redundant) texts of: Edwin P. Hoyt, Guadalcanal (New York: Stein and Day, 1982) and Eric Hammel, Guadalcanal: Starvation Island (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987). 11 the beastly climate either created or accentuated the impact of some of the harshest terrain ever faced by land armies in the history of war." Touched With Fire was the first monograph since The Old Breed to dedicate sizable attention to environmental adversities faced by the 1st Marine Division in the Pacific. Touched With Fire's main focus was a multi-national perspective covering several levels of experience relating to combat, with notable environmental backdrop. However, the effort was still cursory, in terms of the environment, and almost void of relevant scientific data. All the key components were addressed—heat, humidity, rain, mud, the terrain, and disease—but none in the necessary detail. Bergerud admirably covered Americans, Japanese, and Australians, and others, from several divisions with similar and excellent detail. However, suffering from theatre-level generalizations meant that the unique problems faced by a given unit on a particular island were often missed. For instance, Rabaul receives, on average, 83.6 inches of rainfall a year,23 while Cape Gloucester on New Britain, receives 150 inches per year.24 Although it is fair to make assertions about New Britain as a whole, the Japanese at Rabaul and the 1st Marine Division at Cape Gloucester had quite different experiences in relation to rainfall, and a generalization on precipitation glosses over some not-insignificant realities. Since environmental adversities plagued the men on a daily level, generalizations, even if reduced to the theatre, cannot take into account the complexities offered by the sources, both veteran and official. This is not a criticism, as Bergerud's work is as under-appreciated as it is fairly comprehensive, on the level of Meirion and Susie Harries' 1991 Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army or even Alexander's Storm Landings. However, the limits of Touched With Fire did not allow for a detailed exploration of specific environmental factoring, and instead only presented applicability to all involved, encompassing differing
Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 68. 23 "Average Rainfall," RabaulM.O., Papua New Guinea, World Climate, 2008,
25 Robert Leckie was not in favor of the heightened attention to the socially construction fractures in a combat unit. He wrote, "[n]or was my squad troubled by racial or religious bigotry. We had no 'inner conflict,' as the phrase goes. There things happen most often in the imagination of men who never fought. Only rear echelons with plenty of fat on them can afford such rich diseases, like an epicure with his gout" (33) Leckie stressed, instead, that Marine uniformity versus the twin enemies was the important conflict. "We could not stand dissension, and we sank all differences in a common dislike for officers and for discipline; and later on, for the twin enemies of the Pacific, the jungle and the Jap" (33). 26 John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), x. 27 Dower, x. 13 the Osaka Puck, or being submerged in a 'hostile environment' with insects and rain, for four months, on end, without rest? The misery generated by environmental adversities on Guadalcanal and New Britain perhaps were more essential than assertions of latent racism defining the war. However, the relationship between cultural factors and environmental influences should be conceived as being more complimentary than adversarial. Historians are more dependent on textual sources, to which physical and social cultural source-bases lend themselves. This is an important reason why environmental adversities have been downplayed in the literature. Exploring environmental adversity provides a durable objectivity that other approaches might lack. For instance, while the likelihood of someone falsifying their recall of, for example, war crimes or homosexuality is high, environmental interactions are less controversial. This project's major contribution to the literature is to posit an alternative to Dower's cultural assertions in War Without Mercy (and the cultural histories by Schrijvers and Cameron). These histories point to cultural understandings, myth creation, material culture, and the peculiarities of racism in American cultural and institutional history for the answers to why the Pacific War hosted such violent behavior. This project posits that more immediate, bases, and elemental aspects of the wartime experience were the keys to inducing the particularly violent characteristics that have come to define the Pacific War. Ultimately, it was the physical environment, and its inherent adversities, that produced the situations where misery was generated in the individual to the point that vicious warfare could then be conducted. US infantry defiled enemy corpses in the Pacific far more than in Europe, but this correlated not to cultural signifiers or latent racism, as expressed in a propaganda poster, but to immediate physical environmental contexts in the Pacific that were more adverse than their European counterparts. In Europe, a Church reminded US infantry of the Christian and Humanist standards of Western civilization. In the Pacific, there were a lack of Churches, but an abundance of bizarre creatures, extreme weather, unfathomable landscapes, and so on, that caused US infantry to feel detached from civilization. Germans might have been more like Americans than the Japanese were, but Germany had much more resemblance to America than New Guinea did. The immediate context of campaigning was far more 14 relevant than cultural icons and ideals that may or may not have been interpersonalized by US infantry; and this is the major contribution of this project. By 1998, geo-military history was in full swing, if not overly popular, with the publishing of Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War, by Harold A. Winters, et al.28 Explicit in the title was an adverse relationship between military forces and the in-country. The scope and attention was directly geo-military, but, the expanded scope once again stripped environmental adversities of their daily reality and specific contexts. Battles that were overly influenced by land, weather, and ecology fostered a framework so large (two centuries of the West) as to leave the simple conclusion that terrain and weather always influence the battlefield. Also, there was a minimal effort in exploring veteran memory. Data and descriptive science were scattered and poorly integrated. Although Battling the Elements provided general insights and a greater appreciation of the subject matter, it suffered from the span of over 150 years—all of New Guinea in WWII and Dien Bien Phu during the Vietnam War were covered in a mere fifteen pages.29 In 2002, military scholar Patrick K. O'Donnell published an oral history collection of elite US troops in the Pacific and Asia. By its nature, the author's text was sparse in Into the Rising Sun: In Their Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat (2002). In his words, O'Donnell briefly recognized the importance of environmental influences by placing the Pacific War in contrast to its European counterparts (also the subject matter of O'Donnell's prior work). Echoing Bergerud, he wrote that "[t]he war in the Pacific does not parallel the war in Europe or even the Russo-German war on the Eastern Front. Many factors contributed to making it perhaps the most savage and brutal theatre in World War II."30 O'Donnell continued by noting that "[t]errain, climate, and disease pushed both sides to the limits of their endurance. Casualties were horrendous, but it was the intensity with which both sides prosecuted
2 See also C. E. Wood, Mud: A Military History (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006). 29 See "Hot, Wet, and Sick: New Guinea and Dien Bien Phu," Harold A. Winters with Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., William J. Reynolds, and David W. Rhyne, Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 232-247. 30 Patrick K. O'Donnell, Into the Rising Sun: In Their Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat (New York: The Free Press, 2003 [2002]), 3. 15 the war that made it unique."31 Yet, that was the end of the treatment including environmental agency. And there was no attempt to comment what exactly differentiated the Russo-German War with the Pacific War, both 1941-1945, both racially charged and both with exceptionally challenging environments. Yet, it is not proper to assume that the environmental conditions in the Pacific were 'worse' than the Russian Steppes. Every army, to some extent, faced the environment as an adversary. With this in mind, a return to studying infantry within a relevant unit (from company to corps), serves as the ideal framework for which to present the unique aspects of environmental adversities in their specific contexts. Also in 2002, accomplished military-scholar Gordon Rottman and historian Peter Schrijvers both released publications revolving around a geo-military approach (only partially for Schrijvers), but both from significantly differing viewpoints. Rottman's World War II Pacific Island Guide: A Geo-Military Study addressed what he believed was a missing component in the history of the Pacific War: basic information, particularly environmental facts. This hole was not just in the literature, but in essential fact-finding and research related to Pacific battles. As Rottman noted in his first sentence, "the author found it to be surprisingly difficult to find many facts and details regarding the islands of the Pacific on which military operations occurred...." However, Rottman's version of geo-military history revolved around the older, more operational considerations. Despite basic meteorological and some limited ecological discussions, Rottman's Pacific Island Guide was both useful and, again, too general. As a teaching tool or even a casual read, the Pacific Island Guide lived up to its promise, Rottman putting in the ground work for all our benefit—similar to the companion piece, U.S. Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle (2001). Ultimately, Rottman's Pacific Island Guide highlighted the hole in the literature, the element of the environment in the war, and has helped to provide a basis from which to mature the sub-field. Peter Schrijvers' The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (2002) imposed the American literary tradition on the
31 O'Donnell, 3. 32 Gordon L. Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide: A Geo-Military Study (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 2002), Introduction. 16 serviceman's experience of the Pacific War. Chapters titled "Pioneers," "Romantics," "Missionaries," and "Imperialists" demonstrated this overarching literary framework. The GI War Against Japan inserted any voice from fifteen million US men in uniform into these conceptual silos. Schrijvers implied that the Pacific War for US infantry was a sum of the frontier, their frustrations, and their furies, some expressed externally, some internally. However, identification and meaningful treatment are different issues, and Schrijvers over-reached the goal, dividing too many people amongst the whole of the wars in the Pacific and Asia. For the 1st Marine Division, generalizations like "[mjalign malaria could kill" offered no insight into the daily, hourly experience of the men at the sharp end. The concentrated writing did present much with great brevity, and with obvious understanding. However, despite that Schrijvers hit the main issues of the overall problems, virtually no analysis nor details were provided to explain the mass of complexities revolving around, say malaria on Guadalcanal. Explorations of cultural history, through military sources, as in Cameron's American Samurai, seemed to float freely in Schrijvers' narrative, detached from corporeal contexts that offered as much reason for human actions as social constructions. After all, what soldier experience histories were lacking most was the recognition that the mind followed the body, not visa versa. Immediate realities outweighed most other considerations. As Jim Johnston pointed out, "[a]t some point in his tour of duty he subconsciously develops a fatalistic resignation, and thereafter concerned himself very little with the profundities of life. Though he may have an awareness of such things as honor and fidelity and eternity, he applied himself primarily to the immediate and elemental pursuits of survival." Rage and frustration might find themselves manifested against "others"—ethnicities, genders, classes, and the infinite social fractions—but it was, in part, environmental adversities that allowed the body and mind to fester in misery and then to allow such men to be prone to vicious warfare. In 2004, the bridge between military history and environmental history was explicated noted by environmental historians Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell,
33 Peter Schrijvers, The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 131. 34 Johnston, 68. 17 editors of Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of Warfare. Tucker and Russell posited that "[o]ur own work.. .had led us to conclude that war had shaped the natural environment in important and underappreciated ways."35 Tucker and Russell continued, describing the problem of the literature's (both in military and environmental history) under-appreciation. "We had noticed that environmental historians occasionally mentioned war in their narratives, just as military historians often discussed the natural settings of their subject, but the two groups had virtually no contact with each other." 6 Narratives burdened by a victimization discourse, in movement histories, were most likely the culprit; military historians, many of whom had service records themselves, were perhaps not interested in researching their role in the destruction of the natural world. Conversely, environmental historians tended not to view the environment in oppositional terms with civilization. Consequently, as Tucker and Russell affirmed, "[a]lmost no historians had set out to understand the relationship between war and the environment in any systematic way."37 Bergerud was a small exception, Rottman as well, but grand geo-military histories like Battling the Elements and Mud, and partial coverage like that in The GI War Against Japan, were not producing systematic approaches and or detailed explorations. Treatment of the environment and warfare was often just the product of the battle, not a systematic framework applicable to other subject matters. As Tucker and Russell, in a somewhat accusatory tone, noted about military historians, "[although military historians have long portrayed nature as a set of strategic or tactical obstacles—especially in the form of terrain and weather—they have rarely discussed the impact of warfare on that same terrain." Natural Enemy, Natural Ally presented fascinating environmental work related to war. Tucker and Russell expound that "[rjarely, however, have we studied nature as a soldier." Now military history needs to respond. This project is an answer to that call, employing a long held but hidden belief that environmental adversities were
35 Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell, eds, Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of Warfare (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2004), vi. 36 Tucker and Russell, eds, vi. 37 Tucker and Russell, eds, vi. 38 Tucker and Russell, eds, 1. 39 Tucker and Russell, eds, 1. 18 just as harsh as the Japanese, and that the men of the Is Marine Division were survivors of combat and environmental adversities.
Methodology ~ A handful of veterans were met by and entered into correspondence with the author, working on the premise of 'what was your experience of the environment during the Pacific War?' Follow-up questions ensued for months and years afterwards, with periodic questioning still continuing today. Unfortunately, due to the rapid expansion of text on Guadalcanal and New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa were removed from the project. This reduced the number of veteran voices presented here, as it cut out almost half of the original responders, leaving this project with eight primary interviewees.40 Several veterans sent their previously-written manuscripts instead, and these totaled five essential sources for this project.41 Every man was verified by a comrade or service record excerpt, and most of the respondents had already conducted some form of historical activity. For this project, their citations were modified in terms of formatting and spelling only. A disproportionate number of voices presented here were veterans from A Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines (A-l-5). Robert Shedd, one of the primary interviewees, heads an A-l-5 veteran association, and veteran Dr. Herschel Cox, Jr.'s amateur oral history collection also concerned A-l-5 veterans. These sources were heavily relied on and explain the over-representation of veterans from this specific unit. The trade-off is that these men all verify each other. Luckily, only two false memoirs were discovered during the research of this project. Veterans were contacted via the lively and active 1st Marine Division Association. The author attended both the Annual Anniversary and Annual Reunion in the winter and summer of 2005. The veterans' correspondence were augmented by
Melvin Cruthers, Ralph Evans, Donald Fall, Charles Frankel, Henry Paustian, George Peto, Robert Shedd, David Slater. 41 Anthony Chillemi, Herschel Cox, Jr., James Johnston, William Kapp, and William Schwacha. 42 William Laing's The Unspoken Bond: Stories about the Naval Hospital Corpsmen and the Marines they served with and the battles they fought in the Pacific during the Second World War, beginning with Guadalcanal-Tulagi, 1942 (London, ON: Third Eye, 1998) was declared problematic when veterans from the same unit confirmed (muster roles and group pictures) that Laing was not in that unit on Guadalcanal. Kerry Lane's Guadalcanal Marine (Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2004) was found to have blatant plagiarism of Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow by the author. 19
several published memoirs, two of which were essential: Robert Leckie's memoir in 1957 and Jim Johnston's in 1998. One unpublished memoir by veteran Anthony Chillemi was also invaluable with the Guadalcanal and New Britain chapters of that work becoming central to this narrative. Also central were the previously unexplored contemporary notes of veteran William Schwacha and veteran William Kapp.43 Kapp sent his notes to the author, and Robert Shedd forwarded Schawacha's notes. Quotes from Eugene B. Sledge's With the Old Breed (1981) were used in the "Boot Camp" section of Chapter two. Although Sledge did not fight on Guadalcanal or New Britain, it was felt that a voice representing recruits at San Diego was worthwhile. Leslie Harrold, also a Peleliu and Okinawa veteran, was included in the conclusion. In addition, the published oral history collections of Henry Berry in the early 1980s and Patrick K. O'Donnell's work in the late 1990s, as well as George McMillan and Eric Bergerud's work, helped diversify the sources. In total, forty-eight voices were included in the narrative. Most of the veteran voices came from combat Marines. However, some of the most poignant words came from corpsmen Anthony Chillemi. The Navy's corpsmen were not technically Marines, but were considered organic to the Division. They were also as frontline as anyone, often even further ahead than riflemen. The liberal use of corpsmen was considered prudent, especially with their wartime experience centering on medical issues inherent to the environment. As veteran Bill Jenkins stated to the interviewers of the USMC Historical Center at the Kansas City Reunion of the 1st Marine Division Association, "I don't even consider myself Navy."44 In addition, there was a sprinkling of Raiders, some Japanese reflections, some words from several high-ranking officers, anonymous Marines from The Old Breed, and two veterans from Defense Battalions for good measure. While the oral history components of this project are considered central, contemporary documents from various institutional organizations provided information for the Division as a whole. Archival research was conducted periodically over two years, 2005-2007, with the first being in "Archives II" of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland. Record Group (RG) 127:
43 William Schwacha was known as Billie Gene to friends. 44 Bill Jenkins, interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 5, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association Reunion 58th Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. 20
Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, the informally titled "geographical files," contained information on ground combat units mostly during WWII. However, the records also contained several holes and inconsistencies. For instance, RG 127 has unit histories of 3-11 on Guadalcanal and New Britain while 2-11 has only histories of January and February on New Britain. The entire 11th Marines has a history of their time on New Britain but only 4-11 has a history of their involvement on Peleliu. There are some random field messages from 3-7 on Guadalcanal, contrasted to the unit history of 1-1 for the entire war. This eclectic mix is widespread throughout the record group, compounded by problems of thin and old paper with often illegible penciled writing. In some cases what appears to be soil, oil, rust, and even blood, splashes various pages. One document even had a huge gash, as if it supported some heavy machinery or received a shrapnel wound. The condition of the worst-for-wear documents reflected the contemporary reality—Marine units were often engaged with the enemy, and attention to histories often did not have priority, or the documents themselves were destroyed. As the Final Report for the Guadalcanal campaign admitted, "[i]t is regretted that the exigencies of the campaign did not permit the keeping of a more exact account and that in many cases records were destroyed due to the danger involved in a large accumulation of documentary material in the presence of the enemy."45 The written records of the units at the time also reflect the importance of things that needed to be communicated via paper. That it was rainy, humid, and insect- inundated was still a reality, but not one that needed to be recorded in a regimental diary. Everyone on the ground knew it. However the real danger is when the WWII generation is gone and things that were self-evident to participants disappear for subsequent generations. It is in that limit of the written record that veteran memory provides the necessary light. This concept that regimental diaries were not enough was at least partially realized at the time. Towards the end of the war, the Army had finally
Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase I, "Copy of Subject Report," May 24, 1943, Box 39, RG 127, National Archives and Records Administration, "Archive II," College Park, MD. 21
organized official historians to record the Battle of Okinawa (alas, the last battle) on the ground from L-Day forward. Two important archives were fortunately present on the same grounds—the Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections at the Gray Research Center and the Marine Corps Audiovisual Research Archives, both in Quantico, Virginia. Although the Gray Research Center typically transfers most of its pre-Middle East conflicts documents to NARA, it still retains several key documents from WWII (notably the Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V). The previous four phases, comprising the first volume of the Final Report, were pulled at NARA. The report, in essence, is a series of annexes written by the various units within the Division after a recap narrative of the battle, making the report quite diverse. For instance, annexes cover personnel, aviation, logistics, and even an extract from a Japanese diary. The Gray Research Center also houses, in addition to the Final Report for Guadalcanal, the Special Action Report for the 1st Marine Division on New Britain. A useful source, this was unfortunately one of a few for New Britain. The Battle of New Britain is sparsely represented in the archives and seldom mentioned in the literature. Andre B. Sobocinski wrote to the author about the four unpublished volumes of The History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II and how New Britain was missing from this source. Sobocinski noted that "they [a team of historians] based their tome on first hand accounts, ONI reports, as well as articles published in The Hospital Corps Quarterly and The Naval Medical Bulletin. Regretfully, and quite surprisingly, there is no mention of New Britain in this history."47 Sobocinski continued to highlight New Britain's importance: "I have looked through our dependable World War II sources: the Annual reports of the Surgeon General of the Navy, the unpublished histories of the medical department, as well as the three volume abridged History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II (published in 1953) but there is nothing that specifically relates to New
46 Please see Roy E. Appleman, et al, United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: Okinawa: The Last Battle (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1948). 47 Andre B. Sobocinski
Britain." This is typical of the historical treatment of New Britain. For instance, primary research on New Britain, a campaign in which the 1st Marine Division was under Army jurisdiction, meant that NARA's Record Group 407, of the Army's WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, was explored in addition to the Marine's RG 127. Andre B. Sobocinski at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, in Washington, went beyond his duties and forwarded several of the Bureau's primary sources, of which the Manual of the Medical Department of the United States Navy (1939) and The History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished (1946), were both useful. The heart of this project's research is a combination of veteran recollection and contemporary military records. In sources, the Division's experience is anchored from the top and the bottom, with the veterans providing detail of their own, and their buddies, wartime experiences with environmental adversities. As reflective of a limited historiography, secondary sources were not heavily relied on, save The Old Breed.
Memory ~ Some might think that the memories of elderly men in their early 1980s are problematic, too far removed from the source or too influenced by external interpretations of events. It is generally recognized, and shown in laboratory tests, that an increase in age correlates to a decline in memory recall. Some veterans admit to memory loss over time, as when Luman Slawson admitted to Herschel Cox, Jr., in 1996, that "I'm not trying to joke with you, but I am in my 75l year now, and if called under oath to testify as to events of December 29-30, 1995,1 could not be sure at all let alone 1943."50 Another complication was the trauma that combat often induced, and consequently memory retrieval could become emotional taxing. As veteran Roy Alderman noted about post-traumatic stress disorder, "[m]ost of us have P.T.S.D. and our minds, in an effort to protect us, have erased much of the painful and detrimental
48 Andre B. Sobocinski
stuff. I have personally lost two years. All the rest of the men's names are familiar but I cannot come up with any faces."51 Memory loss over time is important to keep in mind while reading the following subject matter. The same is noted for memory contamination, whereas a veteran's memory begins to coalesce with other texts, particularly publications like The Old Breed or Leckie's and Sledge's memoirs. Some veterans start to use works like Leckie's to fill in the gaps, and a close reading of a memoir like Kerry Lane's Guadalcanal Marine shows that some paragraphs were virtually cut-and-pasted from Helmet For My Pillow. These two issues, contamination and troubles in recall, should always been acknowledged. However, the case can be overstated. Memory experts still note that "[d]espite the increase in communication and memory problems, normal aging does not bring with it a complete deterioration of memory and language. The losses...are only rarely debilitating,"52 aside from serious disorders. Another psychologist concluded on memory and aging that both young people and elders "show quite reliable performance with regard to sensory memory." The 'problems' with elders and memory are typically about tasks, not about events and sensations in recall.54 Besides, memory encoding happened when the men were young, and the events were often so extraordinary that they tended to be made into permanent memories, unless too traumatic. Ultimately, there "is little question that performance declines with age," however "there is rather more difficulty in predicting what will and will not decline and at what age it will do so."55 Also, memory loss is more related to mental disorders than sensory memory, as it "seems clear that the effects of age alone are substantially smaller than the effects of age-related dysfunction."5 Several of the veterans cited here, like Henry Paustian, George Peto, and Melvin Cruthers, had done historical work prior to this project, and so their memories of WWII were finely tuned.
51 Roy Alderman in Cox, et al, 30. 52 Darlene V. Howard, "Aging and Memory Activation: The Priming of Semantic and Episodic Memories," in Leah L. Light and Deborah M. Burke, Language, Memory, and Aging (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 77. 53 John A. Groeger, Memory and Remembering: Everyday Memory in Context (New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc., 1997), 295. 54 Groeger, 295. 55 Groeger, 295, for both citations in this sentence. 56 Groeger, 295-296. 24
Aside from strict memory recall issues, the process of reminiscence was also occurring when the veterans wrote to the author. As gerontologists summarize "our personal experiences and the literature [academic research] convince us that lives can be interpreted in many ways. What has been missing is the theme that lives can be interpreted, that the experience of reminiscence can give us different and important new perspectives."57 While working through their memories, the veterans who put ink to paper (like voice to a recorder) were sorting through emotions, sensations, and interpretation of events and importance. There was also a therapeutic value in these reminiscences, as "writing about past experiences such as traumas, losses, and illnesses can have a healing effect on individuals of various ages."58 For instance, veteran Henry Paustian, who is cited extensively for New Britain, informed the author that he had wrote a fictional account of his experiences. Despite their age, their mental capacity for memory was fully active and regularly exercised. This embracing of memories, some quite dark and disturbing, some traumatizing, was not common until the 1980s. After that point, though, the outpouring was extensive. As veteran Bruce Watkins noted in 2000, "obviously these experiences, bottled up for years and burned into my memory, finally rose to the surface."59 This makes sense, that veterans nearing the end of their lives were compelled to tell their story. Quite often their role in WWII was their most important contribution. Also, their children, now as adults, and grandchild as young adults, were often engaged in the cultural process of veteran veneration, especially with the recent role of WWII in popular media. In fact, the younger generation is inundated with various media forms that raise 'the greatest generation' onto a pedestal. Through digital simulation, a generation six decades removed can act out fantasy scenarios of fighting Axis soldiers, and often in a highly graphic manner. Straddling all this is the historian's need to record the story before the veterans are gone, a simple reality.
Edmund Sherman, Reminiscence and the Self in Old Age (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1991), ix. 58 Barbara K. Haight and Jeffrey D. Webster, The Art and Science of Reminiscing: Theory, Research, Methods, and Applications (Washington: Taylor & Francis, 1995), 257. 59 Richard Bruce Watkins, Brothers in Battle: One Marine's Account of War in the Pacific (independently produced, 2000), 58. 25
It is appropriate to derive generalizations about the collective, say the Division at one extreme, from a few dozen voices. This especially works for a military unit dedicated to team work and the group. As gerantologist Edmund Sherman highlighted, "[sjocial reminiscence is a contagious phenomenon... The social context of reminiscing also calls forth and displays certain dimensions and aspects of the phenomenon that might not be the case in private reminiscence."60 He also noted that "there seems to be no other private mental activity [reminiscence] that has such an inclination toward sharing and mutuality in human discourse,"61 stressing how reminiscence fits well in the group. This means that all the decades of annual anniversaries in Oceanside, California and annual reunions held somewhere different every year across America, provided increased clarity of at least the collective memory of their experience. The central veterans for this project were met through these meetings, and several of the veterans were receptive to the author because they had already worked with historians or undergone a process of reminiscence like reviewing contemporary notes. These are counter-balances to the negative impacts of age on memory. If one veteran's recall disagrees, the aggregate memory is logically more accurate, if not slightly more generalized. Sleep deprivation was not consistent over time and differed for every member of the Division, depending on physiology, tasks-at-hand, and immediate context (patrols, battle, rest periods). The campaigning on New Britain afforded more sleep than on Guadalcanal, except during the initial three weeks of Japanese resistance. This is an important contribution to why the overall New Britain campaign is, generally, better remembered than, particularly, the last phases of Guadalcanal and certainly most of Peleliu. Back on Guadalcanal, the men's sleep was interrupted nightly by an aerial harasser sent from Rabaul just for this purpose, not to mention naval battles and sporadic bombardment from both the sea and sky. Sleep deprivation lowers the effectiveness of soldiers. Modern studies on sleep deprivation are of significant interest to important military institutions. Today's research concludes that "[s]leep deprivation and sleep restriction impair cognitive
Sherman, 2. 61 Sherman, 8. 26 performance, including general speed of responding and complex mental operations, particularly the ability to anticipate, plan, and maintain good situational awareness."62 Research on sleep deprivation and memory show that the majority of "total sleep deprivation studies have shown that a night or more without sleep results in memory deficits." Fragmented sleep is another issue and the relevant scientific literature notes that these studies have differing conclusions, revolving around the negligible to considerable effects that broken sleep has on attention, task performance, and cognitive abilities (including memory).64 While a Marine tended not to suffer total sleep loss (at least outside of a major, multi-day battle), sleep fragmentation was generally quite considerable at many points of their campaigning. If specific sleep cycles were disrupted, memory formation suffered.65 However, sleep deprivation was probably never enough to negate memory encoding. Sleep deprivation is one reason why recollections of the latter weeks on Peleliu are sparse compared to the quality and quantities of recall related to the beach invasion. Guadalcanal seldom produced situations of total sleep loss (except the major land, sea, and air battles), and the same for New Britain (minus the initial Japanese resistance). Generally, this is an important factor that needs to be kept in mind with the subject matter of this project, but the case can be overstated. Sleeping conditions were abysmal but exhaustion counter-balanced this, as those who are significantly sleep deprived often have more efficient sleep and with a short pre-sleep period.66 The following project is divided into chronological and thematic chapters. Chapter two covers the time from the Division's birth to its deployment in the South
Clete A. Kushida, ed, Lung Biology in Health and Diseases: Sleep Deprivation: Clinical Issues, Pharmacology, and Sleep Loss Effects, Volume 193 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2005), 290. As concluded by Gregory Belenky, Thomas Balkin, and Nancy Wesensten in "Ch. 16: Military Operational Effectiveness" of the above volume, "[o]ur functional brain-imaging studies.. .show that 24 hr of total sleep deprivation reduces brain activity by 6% with further, larger deactivations (12-14%) in the prefrontal context, the parietal association cortices, and the thalamus—those brain areas responsible for complex, higher-order thinking and processing (anticipation, planning, attention, and situational awareness)" (290). Clete A. Kushida, ed, Lung Biology in Health and Diseases: Sleep Deprivation: Basic Science, Physiology, and Behavior, Volume 192 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2005), 202. 64 Genevieve Forest and Roger Godbout, "Attention and Memory Changes" in Kushida, ed, Sleep Deprivation, Volume 192, 209. 65 Genevieve Forest and Roger Godbout, "Attention and Memory Changes" in Kushida, ed, Sleep Deprivation, Volume 192, 214. 66 Please see Jacob Empson, Sleeping & Dreaming, third edition, (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 121-122. 27
Pacific. This hybrid chapter also explores the role of the environment in the two main phases of training and what life was like during the voyage to New Zealand. Chapter three reveals the interplay between operations, the landscape, and the weather of northern Guadalcanal. Chapter four focuses on the important role that mosquitoes and malaria had on the Division while on Guadalcanal. Chapter five analyzes the sick list to flesh out other environmental-based diseases besides malaria. Chapter six brings the Division from Guadalcanal to Australia, and then back north again to New Britain. Operational realities, the landscape, and weather are explored for the Division's campaigns in both western and central New Britain. Chapter seven collects the men's memories about their environmental experiences on New Britain with particular focus on the land, rainfall, and how they coped. Chapter eight treats the obscure but revealing topic of interactions with local fauna on both campaign islands. The brief concluding chapter discusses returning home and some of the implications of this project. Most important is that a focus on environmental adversities addresses the literature's missing components while enhancing understanding of what life and combat were like in the South Pacific. This finding derives from the conclusion that there was little about the wartime experience in the South Pacific that could be separated from environmental influences. The implication, at its logical extreme, is that environmental influences were the defining feature of the Pacific War, as opposed to race-driven brutality or the regular carnality of combat. This might be overstating the case. Prudently, this project claims that environmental adversities were integral to the overall wartime experience; and if this was not the most defining feature, then at least environmental factors were still essential. 28
Chapter Two Call to Arms: Training to Deployment
Jim Johnston wrote that "when I joined the corps I hadn't had the slightest idea of what I was committing myself to."1 Johnston was referring to the unrelenting narrowness of how the United States Marine Corps often conducted itself. In another sense, though, he was referring to the experience of the war itself. During this period of America's call to arms, both the Marine individual and collective became aware of the continuous changes in their living conditions and the need to become observant of the natural world and environmental surroundings. This was certainly prudent as the twin enemies of the 1st Marine Division were unrelenting. Fighting the Japanese became dependent on continually surviving Nature. The opposite was also true; coping with environmental adversity was subject to operational and tactical realities. Peacetime budgetary constraints and popular public support for non-interference in international conflicts meant that the US armed forces, especially the US Marine Corps, remained small and lacking in technological, infrastructure, and combat strength prior to the outbreak of German expansion. The Marine Corps administratively existed within the Department of the Navy and its annual budget. The US Navy itself was already "maintained below the limits of international agreement."3 The number of personnel was also limited in the Corps. On June 30, 1939, the Marine Corps' strength included 19,432 officers and enlisted men.4 Of this, 4840 men were directly in the Fleet
1 James W. Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2000 [1998]), 50. 2 Albert E. Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 11, and Grace Person Hayes, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War Against Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982 [completed in 1953, declassified in 1971), 5. Consider the US Navy's annual budgets: $534,772,000 in 1938, $673,792,000 in 1939, $1,137,608,000 in 1940, $4,465,684,000 in 1941, $21,149,323,000 in 1942, $31,043,134,000 in 1943, $21,796,913,000 in 1944, $29,190,924,000 in 1945, $24,171,930,000 in 1946, and $4,647,136,000 in 1947, all from "Budget of the US Navy: 1794 to 2004," Navy Department Library, April 2006,
Marine Force, including all air components.5 The Fleet Marine Force was the combat arm of the Corps, and three months before the German invasion of Poland it comprised just under 25% of an already small Marine Corps. Organizationally, the ground combat components of the Fleet Marine Force divided mainly into two brigades: the 1st Brigade located in Quantico, Virginia, and the 2nd Brigade in San Diego, California. The core of these two brigades, described as "understrength infantry regiments,"6 were the 5l and 6th Marines,7 respectively—the US Marine units that served in the Great War. Over two years later, by November 30, 1941, just one week before Pearl Harbor, the Marine Corps stood at 65,881,8 an increase of 46,449 personnel since June 1939.9 The Fleet Marine Force had increased to 29,532, making it a significant 44.8% of the Corps. The direct combat arm of the Marines had come to comprise almost half of the entire Corps, this being accomplished mainly through the mobilization of the Organized Marine Corps Reserve in November 1940.10 Instead of two smallish brigades, the Marine Corps now fielded something it had never done before—an entire division. Actually, two divisions. On February 1, 1940 both brigades were officially activated into divisions; the 2nd Brigade converted into the 2nd Marine Division, while at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the 1st Brigade became the 1st Marine Division.11 The basis of these divisions were three infantry regiments. For the 1st Marine Division this was the 1st Marines, 5th Marines, 7th Marines, and an artillery regiment, the 11th Marines. Also part of the Division was a host of support units like "engineer, reconnaissance, and signal units plus medical and other service
Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 47. For comparison, on June 30, 1939, the US Army stood at 187,893 men (with 22,387 being in the Air Corps) split into twelve infantry divisions and the National Guard amounted to 199,491 divided into eighteen divisions from Richard C. Anderson, Jr. "US Army in World War II: Introduction and Organization," 2000,
Boot Camp ~ Young men wishing to enlist in the Marine Corps went to one of two boot camps. For recruiting purposes, prospective Marines on the eastern half of the continental United States (the dividing line was the Mississippi River) went to the infamous Parris Island, South Carolina. Prospective Marines on the western half headed for San Diego's Marine Corps Recruit Depot, and were colloquially known as "Dago people,"14 reflecting Parris Island's centrality to the Corps. Boot camp was normally an eight-week training course, but in the immediate post-Pearl Harbor context, it was reduced to six. After signing up locally, the main means of conveyance was rail. Here the prospective Marines often became friends as they watched the passing scenery, played games, joked with each other, slept, and sought female attention.15 Upon arrival, recruits were funneled into platoons of about sixty to seventy men.16 These platoons were the central organization for the recruits and were controlled by two drill instructors (DIs). Henry Berry referred to these DIs as "the two most important people in the lives of each man during his stay on Parris Island."17 The DIs were so influential in the recruits' lives, and poignant in their memories, because their
Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 48. 13 Today, the 1st Marine Division resides at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, CA. However, in WWII, Camp Elliot (San Diego) was the primary camp (while Camp Pendleton grew). 14 Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: AtPeleliu and Okinawa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 [1981]), 7. The importance of Sledge's memoir to the collective memory of the veterans is immeasurable. In short, other veterans are willing to defer an explanation of their wartime experiences to Sledge's words. For instance, one veteran's response to the author's mail-based questionnaire went as follows: "I don't have the time to go into telling what combat is really like but at any book store you can buy a paper back book that will tell you what combat is really like, name of the book is With the Old Breed, at Peleliu + Okinawa [sic] by E.B. Sledge" (Bob Berline, letter to author, October 13, 2005). 15 Sledge, 7. 16 Sledge, 7. '7 Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 110. Typically a Sergeant ("number one") and a Corporal ("number two"). 31 authority was ultimate. This authority, although institutionally sanctioned, was often represented in its most basic form: threat of corporal punishment. Herschel Cox remembered another platoon's DI as particularly tough and was thankful that his platoon did not have him. "We could have had Sgt. McDonald, the brutal, leather-
1S? voiced D.I. .. .He had a menacing, hard, pock-marked face that scared me." Cox noted that that DI expressed his authority through threats of violence. "We more than once heard him challenge his recruits with 'Take a look at me. Take a good look at me. I'm a rough, tough, son-of-a-bitch, and I can kick the shit out of any one of you. Anyone want to try?' No one ever accepted the challenge." Veteran Warner Pyne reflected that "any memories that most men have about those miserable weeks at boot camp revolve around that tyrannical figure known as the Drill Instructor. Mine was a crackerjack." Veteran Jack Cannal recalled that the challenges from the DI were ones that he wanted to face. "If he can dish it out, I can stick it out. And most of the guys were like that." With authority established, the DFs primary goal was to foster teamwork. Veteran and memoirist Robert Leckie recalled his loss of individuality simply as "you are but a number: 351391 USMCR." Boot camp sought the development of three fundamental elements in producing the basic Marine: Corps culture, the use of infantry weapons, and the conditioning of the body. Combined, these goals were achieved through discipline, obedience, and teamwork. Most abstract of the three, but quite essential, was the teaching of Marine Corps culture. Recruits learned, both systematically and anecdotally, their Corps' history, myths, fables, social customs, special vernacular and technical language, and ethos. Leckie remembered "listening to lectures on military courtesy—'In saluting, the right hand will strike the head at a forty-five-degree angle midway of the right eye'"23 and "listening to lectures on Marine jargon—'From now on everything, floor, street,
Herschel Cox, Jr., et al, Marines Remember Cape Gloucester World War IIBattle (1996), 10. Manuscript sent to author on February 26, 2006. Also available with the Personal Papers Collection, History and Museums Division, Marine Corps Historical Center, Quantico, VA. 19 Cox, et al, 10. 20 Warner Pyne in Berry, 63. 21 Jack Cannal, interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 4, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association 58th Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. 22 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 9. 23 Leckie, 8. 32 ground, everything is 'the deck.'" Veteran Lee Stack recalled that "one of the first things we had to learn was to use nautical terms. ...It could get confusing as hell at first." Here the recruits were infused with everything from the apparently absurd minutiae to deeper cultural understandings of their part in the larger history of the Corps. In total, these lessons accumulated into answering what it meant to be a Marine: a distinct and proud service defined by discipline, preparedness, and fighting prowess. But it was the attitudinal change that was considered profound. Leckie recalled that "[m]ost important in this transformation was...the new attitude of mind."26 Attitudes like self-confidence, toughness, and being 'Spartan' or "salty." More than just words, these attributes were intended to be personified by every Marine, thus justifying their service's distinctiveness. Fundamental to being a Marine was learning basic military skills. The recruits were lectured and drilled on essential techniques of combat and weaponry. Stress was placed on mastering the rifle. First the Springfield .303 and then eventually the M-l Garand. For three weeks the recruits' time was dominated by the rifle range, where they learned "proper sight setting, trigger squeeze, calling of shots, use of the leather sling as a shooting aid, and other fundamentals."27 Proper techniques for cradling a rifle while crawling were taught, as was an intense focus on the cleanliness of the rifle. This hyper- cleanliness was utilitarian, but in a sense it meant the continuous guard against foreign elements from entering the rifle. Keeping the rifle clean was a constant task for the Marines in war, and most of the time the rifle's cleanliness was maintained more than their own bodies, demonstrating its centrality. The Marine Corps' conceptualization of all Marines was that they were riflemen, first and foremost. As Berry explained, "no matter where a Marine would go after boot camp, he was considered available to serve as a rifleman at a minute's
TO notice." For some men, though, getting accustomed to the rifle was a difficult task. Veteran Bob Stiles, then a young man from the Bronx, recalled his unfamiliarity with firearms. "Boots were arriving by the thousands and they're throwing all this gear at
24 Leckie, 8. 25 Lee Stack in Berry, 27. 26 Leckie, 20. 27 Sledge, 12. The Springfield .303 weighted 8.6 pounds. 28 Berry, 110. 33 them at the same time. I recall looking at my '03 rifle, all covered with cosmoline and wondering what the hell am I supposed to do with this? I was a city boy; I'd never fired a rifle in my life."29 Stiles came to appreciate his training as he eventually became a scout and then sniper. Conversely though, Eugene Sledge noted that those who were accustomed to firearms in their civilian life had to forget everything they knew and re- learn rifle mastery the Marine Corps way. Rifle mastery was absolutely essential to what the DIs and instructors demanded. After all, as Leckie claimed, the "rifle is the marine's weapon." Perhaps the most basic lesson was the conditioning of the physical body. The DIs constantly drilled the recruits in order to strengthen their bodies. Since no special exercising machines or weight-lifting equipment were available, the recruits built their body strength and endurance through a type of simplistic but effective exercise known as calisthenics. Calisthenics utilized the body's own weight to provide the resistance to improve muscle mass. Furthermore, calisthenics was akin to aerobics in that the rapidity of movements increased cardiovascular strength. Also, calisthenics required nothing but a small open area—perfect for the crowded boot camp situation. Typical exercises included jumping-jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, and so on. The various movements were often accompanied with rifles in hand. The calisthenics sessions were performed early in the morning in an open, outdoor area with music sometimes played to provide cadence. Although environmental impacts on the recruit were minimal at Parris Island and San Diego, DIs did use various aspects of the landscape to help induce discipline. Bruce Watkins recalled his DI forcing them to remain motionless in the face of buzzing insects. "I have special memories of standing stiffly at attention early in the morning amidst a swarm of small, biting insects. The Drill Instructor screamed at us to 'Stand still, damn it! They've gotta eat, too!'"31 By utilizing the insects, the DI achieved the dual goal of teaching discipline and a practical lesson. Since swatting at nearby insects is instinctive, discipline was the main lesson in the above case. Another DI utilized the
29 Bob Stiles in Berry, 78. Cosmoline was a version of solidified and purified paraffin (a fatty, oily substance). After manufacturing, rifles were covered with cosmoline for protection. 30 Leckie, 20. 31 Richard Bruce Watkins, Brothers in Battle: One Marine's Account of War in the Pacific (independently produced, 2000), 2. 34
southern-Californian terrain by marching his platoon to a beach near the San Diego Bay area. The "soft sand made walking exhausting, just what he [the DI] wanted. For hours ^9 on end, for days on end, we drilled back and forth across the soft sand." Understandably, legs grew sore, but, as Sledge asserted, "to drop out of ranks because of tired legs was unthinkable." The social humiliation that the DI would have unleashed ensured that the recruits performed the exercise. The DIs knew that physical conditioning was key to the demands of combat. Since reveille was typically at 0400 and taps at 2200, the recruits generally had about six hours in which to sleep, conduct toiletries, and socialize. Moving to a six-hour sleep schedule started the process of getting the recruits accustomed to the fact that "war allowed sleep to no man."33 Almost all training was conducted in a hurried manner. "The sense of urgency and hurry never abated,"34 in order to teach discipline reflective of combat realities. Some training occurred at irregular intervals as the DIs created a sense of randomness, another attribute of combat. Sledge recounted that at "any time between taps and reveille, however, the DI might break us out for rifle inspection, close-order drill, or for a run around the parade ground or over the sand by the bay."35 Combat provided urgency and randomness, so this type of training, although "seemingly cruel and senseless," profited the recruit. If the recruits passed final inspection, they received emblems for the dress greens and the "shitbirds" were now full Marines.36 After boot camp, potential officers went to Quantico for Officer Candidates School (OCS) training. Lee Stack remembered this phase and recalled that it was here "that several of the men did flunk out."37 He noted that "it wasn't cast in stone that we had to get commissions. It was no snap course, I'll tell you that."38 Even here environmental factors aided in the testing of potential officers. Watkins recalled that "It was June, very humid, and the Virginia ticks and red bugs had a field day with us in the
Sledge, 9, and next citation. Sledge, 10. Sledge, 10. Sledge, 10, and next citation. Berry, 110. Berry explained that shitbird, not boot, was the common vernacular for a recruit. Lee Stack in Berry, 273. Lee Stack in Berry, 273. 35 boondocks." Even classroom learning did not escape Virginia's summer heat. Classes were held "in hot, sweaty, uninsulated classrooms."40 The last test was a forced march wearing full gear for six miles, and after a full night of maneuvers.41 Stack summed up the three-month officer training as being focused on "decision-making" and being "forced to act under extreme tension."42 After OCS came ten weeks of Reserve Officers Class (ROC). In this phase, training focused on field problems and "book solutions."43 When completed, the prospective officer awaited assignment. As for corpsmen, the Marines' medics, the Navy had them in regular recruit training for twelve weeks. Another twelve weeks was dedicated to the Hospital Corps School. After that, the final phase-Field Medical Training-was eight weeks at a Marine base where the training focused on combat conditions. Although corpsmen were naval personnel and not technically Marines, they endured all hardships so intimately with the Marines that the two have become mutual symbiotic. The recruits were issued three kinds of clothing divided by fabric and or color. White thin cotton was used for undergarments, sage-green khaki-styled cotton for regular wear, and green woolen materials intended as winter service wear. The last, woolen products, lacked significance in the South Pacific. The white cotton undergarments also turned out to be less useful because the Marines tried to maintain as few layers of clothing as possible, once in the Pacific. It was the khaki materials, called a Utility Uniform44 by the Corps and "dungarees" by the men, that were "the chief tropical garb of American troops."45
Watkins, 2. Red bugs, or chiggers, refer to harvest mites (family Trombiculidae). 40 Watkins, 2. 41 Watkins, 2. 42 Lee Stack in Berry, 273. 43 Watkins, 3. 44 Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Marines In World War II Commemorative Series; First Offensive: The Marine Campaign For Guadalcanal (Washington: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1992), 5. Hereinafter Shaw, Jr., First Offensive. 45 Alvin P. Stauffer, United States Army in World War II; The Technical Services: The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1956), 121. Note: the Army's Quartermaster was most often responsible "for provisioning Navy and Marine Corps as well as Army units" (Stauffer, 77). This was accomplished through two inter-service organizations: the Joint Logistical Board (JLB) and the Joint Working Board (JWB) (affirmed through the Basic Logistical Plan for Command Areas Involving Joint Operations and approved by both the War and Navy Departments in March 1943) (Stauffer, 76). The overall purpose was to "reduce confusing duplication of logistical efforts" (Stauffer, 76). Most PX items, for instance, were procured for "all three armed services" (Stauffer, 78) 36
The white cotton products were meant to wear directly against the skin for the purpose of comfort. These summer service products were referred to as "skivvies" and included underwear, t-shirts, and socks. Despite the good intentions of issuing these, they were not typically worn in either combat or rest. As Henry Paustian noted, "no one, to my knowledge, wore scivvies—drawers or shirts—or socks during combat or on Pavuvu. hi the tropics, the less layering the cooler." Shedding the inner layers of clothing also freed the Marine from clinging undergarments in hot, humid, and wet conditions. Paustian noted that "[m]ost of us wore no socks or scivvies because our feet and bodies were nearly always wet from rain, sweat" and because "fungus infections thrived on dampness and tight clothing."48 The dungaree blouse was redundant, like the cotton crew-neck or woolen shirts. The dungaree jacket, on the other hand, was the most important layer for the torso. It was made from herring-bone twill cotton which was also "a popular material for civilian work clothing."49 This was the warrior's armor, simple trousers and jacket, and it not only had to meet Japanese steel, but the entire array of environmental assaults that attacked the men. Footwear consisted of a split-leather, ankle high, suede-surfaced, laced boot called a "boondocker."5 There were several other types of footwear issued at various times in the Pacific, but these alternative boots, developed either by Australians or the Army's Quartermaster, never fully caught on. As Henry Paustian recalled, the "boondockers remained standard issue for footwear during my time in the service."51 If worse came to worse, a Marine could always obtain boots another way. Theft was a possibility, an Army supply dump being the men's favorite. Requesting boots sent from home was another alternative. Paustian's parents sent him a pair of boots at their own
Pavuvu was the Division's 'rest island' after New Britain and again after Peleliu. It is located in the Russell Islands, just west of Guadalcanal. Although the Division faced serious environmental adversities on Pavuvu, and despite that it is in the South Pacific, it was not included in this project because Pavuvu brackets Peleliu and belongs with the war outside the South Pacific for that reason. 47 Henry Paustian,
expense. As he recalled, "I wrote home after the Peleliu Campaign and asked my parents to buy me a pair of boots. They sent a pair that were poor quality. I didn't realize that shoes and boots were in scarce supply at home too. I'm sure they were the best available and I may have taken away a ration capability from my family." So called "782 Gear" was issued to recruits about halfway through boot camp. This included two luggage components, a large pack (sea bag), and knapsack (combat pack). The combat pack was carried into battle and contained essential possessions. The larger sea bag held excess gear, and was left aboard the transports to be brought ashore when the situation allowed. The sea bag was made of heavy canvas and, just prior to embarkation, was stenciled with the recruit's name, serial number, rank, and company. A web cartridge belt, made of heavy, woven material, was worn with the dungaree trousers and equipped with ten ammunition pockets plus many grommets to suspend objects.53 Each pocket held either two, five-round clips of .303 caliber bullets for the Springfield .303 (used on Guadalcanal) or one eight-round clip of .303 caliber bullets for the Ml Garand (New Britain, Peleliu, and Okinawa).54 Other items included in the 782 Gear were a set of lace-up leggings, made of canvas, which were intended to help protect the shins and cover any spacing left between the boondockers and trousers, allowing the wearer to enter deep mud. However, "most of us hated the issued leggings"55 and even the Army Quartermaster had to admit that they were "one of the most disliked items."56 The tightness around the shins and calves only welcomed wetness as they trapped moisture. A bayonet and scabbard were issued, as well as either one of two entrenching tools: a small pick or shovel. A canteen with pouch and a canteen cup clung to the cartridge belt. A mess kit was carried in an aluminum container (the plate) and held a metal knife, fork, and spoon. A compass, with pouch, was included, as well as a first aid kit consisting of a
Henry Paustian,
CO collection, as pillow, and as blackout against lights from cigarettes and fuel tablets." In addition, two ponchos could mimic a tent. In fact, the Marines utilized the poncho so well on Guadalcanal that it "convinced quartermasters that its issue to Army troops was desirable."59 The Army's Quartermaster spent a fair amount of time devising specialized clothing for extreme weather conditions. Many of the experiments were rejected by soldiers in the field who tested these materials, particularly attempts to create a jungle boot.60 The jungle boot was actually a sneaker-typed shoe with a canvas-top and corrugated rubber-soles, meant to provide ventilation directed at preventing jungle rot and the negation of leggings.61 In theory it "furnished better protection against mud and insects than did regular leather service footwear plus leggings."62 Regrettably, it was deemed "ill-adapted for general use by combat troops" because it slipped on roots and wet soil, had poor arch and ankle support, and a shrinking canvas top.63 By the time the jungle boots "received favorable reports" the war was over.64
Infantry Training ~ After conducting some limited amphibious training with the Army in the Caribbean, the 1st Marine Division, having barely just moved to Quantico and then Parris Island, settled in New River, North Carolina in May 1941.65 This 111,710-acre site was purchased by the Marine Corps and selected due to its relative isolation, size,
Henry Paustian,
66 McMillan, 7. 67 William Hawkins in Berry, 41. Hawkins eventually became the Captain of B Company, 5' Marines, and is considered the first American to land on Guadalcanal in 1942. 68 New River was also called Shack City and Tent Camp One early on. 69 Sledge, 15. 40 de-civilization, started at boot camp, were continued. New River also gave parts of the Division opportunities to practice amphibious landings.70
71 Training revolved around route marches and bivouacking in the "boondocks." Marines packed their gear for various situations and, up to battalion-level, generally marched for miles on small dirt roads through the forests.72 Leckie described one route march. "There had been joking and even some singing the first mile out. Now, only the birds sang; but from us there was just the thud of feet, the clank of canteens, the creak of leather rifle slings, the occasional hoarse cracking of a voice raised and breath wasted in a curse."73 The battalion also got some chances to perform practice amphibious landings—a hostile sea-to-ground invasion technique that the Marine Corps specialized in and considered themselves the progenitors of the accompanying doctrine. Leckie remembered Higgins boats awaiting them in the canals of the North Carolinian Inland Waterway System.74 He recalled that they had "climbed stiffly into the boats, sitting with our heads just above the gunwales, our helmets between our knees."75 The boats drove out into the Atlantic, circled, and then headed back towards the shore fanned out into an assault line. The boats "plowed into the sand," the Marines "vaulted into the surf," they pretended to fire at imaginary targets, and the exercise was over.76 Prior to Pearl Harbor, when fewer troops were packed in the area, the 5th Marines practiced landings on Onslow Beach, and some landings with the Army. The battalion then marched inland to set up camp in various forest clearings. As Leckie recalled, the men set up their pup tents, carried since Tent City, dug small trenches around the tents for drainage, and camped out for a few days. At this point, rain was the main nuisance—"that baleful, wet intruder."77 For bedding, the Marines only had a blanket, but augmented this with collected pine needles. As Leckie recalled, "[w]hat a bed! Dark green blanket above, another below, and beneath it all the
William H. Bartsch, "Operation Dovetail: Bungled Guadalcanal Rehearsal, July 1942," The Journal of Military History, 66 (April 2002): 448. 71 Not to be confused with the contemporary vernacular "boondockers," meaning footwear. 72 Leckie, 35. Leckie's references are from early-1942. 73 Leckie, 36. 74 Leckie, 37. 75 Leckie, 37. 76 Leckie, 38. 77 Leckie, 39. 41 pliant pungent earth and fragrant pine needles." After a certain time in the boondocks the Marines returned to Tent City. Back at camp they resumed specialized training: scaling cargo nets on mock-up wooden structures "built to resemble the side of a ship," digging foxholes for days, listening to lectures, firing, cleaning, and dismantling rifles, and so on; and all of it often in the rain—prudent training. Then, once again, they headed out to the boondocks. Training schedules in the wild varied, but as time moved forward training intensified, and time spent in the forest lengthened. In the immediate post-Pearl Harbor context, the Corps was eager to strengthen its new divisions. So, despite how important weapons training was to the infantry training phase, it was still rushed at New River. Bob Stiles remembered that "[t]hey cut short our course on Parris Island to six weeks and hustled us over to Tent City near Jacksonville, North Carolina. When we got there, they gave us an advanced rush course in weapons." Weapons training was monotonous and technical, but paid vital dividends in combat. Marines learned via lectures and live demonstrations, running the gamut from machine guns to mortars, antitank guns to pistols. Stiles recounted weapons training: "Take the .45. We'd have to go into a tent where they'd blindfold you. Then you had to take the darn thing apart and put it back together again, naming each part as you put it into place. If you fouled up, good-bye weekend pass—not even any beer at the slop chute—you'd spend Sunday doing the whole thing over and over."81 Leckie recalled "[k]now your weapon, know it intimately, know it with almost the insight of its inventor; be able to take it apart blindfolded or in the dark, to put it together; be able to recite mechanically a detailed description of the gun's operation." Hand-to-hand combat training centered on judo and knife fighting.83 Here the Marines became knowledgeable about their "foxhole companion"—the k-bar. Sledge recalled his judo instructor's prophetic words about knife fighting with the Japanese: '"If you guys were gonna fight Germans, I'd guess you'd never need a fighting knife, but with
8 Leckie, 39. 9 Leckie, 48, and McMillan, 11. 0 Bob Stiles in Berry, 78. 1 Bob Stiles in Berry, 78. "Slope chute" was vernacular for the enlisted men's dining area. 2 Leckie, 28. 3 Sledge, 18. 4 The spelling of k-bar depends on preference. 42 the Japs it's different. I guarantee that you or the man in the next foxhole will use a Ka- Bar on a Jap infiltrator before the war is over.' He was right."85 Despite the isolation from cities, the Marines had the opportunity to make their way, via hitchhiking, to small cities, like New Bern or Morehead City, looking for alcohol and women.86 So, although they had moved further away from civilization, the construction of facilities and the proximity to cities (intoxication and fraternization) negated a more intense interaction with many of the environmental adversities that were present in the Carolinian wild. Still, New River had the positive benefit of increasing morale in direct relation to enduring environmental adversity. Leckie noted that they "slept on the ground and had but a length of canvas for a home, but we had begun to pride ourselves on being able to take it."87 The Marines felt their training at New River was more than adequate, and that its values lay in both living with environmental adversities and learning from real field experience. However, this training period came under criticism after Guadalcanal. In the Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal, submitted in July 1943, several reasons for combat inefficiencies were discussed. One target was the deficiencies of New River's training program and how the Division mismanaged the potential of North Carolina's considerably rugged terrain. No one can predict the future, but General Alexander A. Vandegrift felt compelled to highlight these deficits nonetheless. Vandegrift noted that "[operations in general pointed to the fact that insufficient training had been conducted in close and difficult country approximating jungle terrain. Large sections of the divisional training area in New River were ideally suited for this purpose but were general neglected in favor of open terrain."88 It was not that North Carolina did not provide a sufficient simulation of a tropical rainforest; it was that the Division marched along trails and not directly in the swamps. Vandegrift continued by concluding that "[t]roops in training must be made to live hard and to march long distances by day and night through unfavorable terrain. Ease and comfort in
85 Sledge, 18-19. 86 Leckie, 41. 87 Leckie, 41, and McMillan, 11. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 7, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. 43 training periods will lead to excessive losses in combat." To what extent training should simulate actual combat is a universal question for all military commanders to ponder.
The Lifelines to Australia ~ Within the Navy, significant changes occurred after the fallout from Pearl Harbor. On December 31, 1941, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz became Commander-in- Chief, Pacific Fleet (CinCPac), replacing Admiral Husband Kimmel.90 Around the same time, Admiral Ernest J. King became the new Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet (CinCUS).91 Admiral Kimmel had not only been CinCPac, but also carried the responsibility of being CinCUS since February 1, 1941.92 Admiral Nimitz, from his offices in Hawaii, was responsible for executing the Navy's war against Japan. His superior, Admiral King, represented the Navy, with its Marine Corps, at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) assembled in Washington and at the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff, an inter-Allied organization.93 With the change of its top commanders, the Navy had a fresh face and an eagerness to strike back. In terms of supplying Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific, the Allies still controlled the sea lanes between the continental US and Hawaii, and from both Hawaii and the continental US to the various European colonies of the South Pacific.94 The overall burden of maintaining these basic supply routes fell upon the ravaged US Pacific Fleet. Large-scale retaliations against the Japanese were not yet viable, despite Admiral King's (and the US public's) desire; so the Navy had to forfeit initiative and stay on the defensive in early 1942. The Army did its share in protecting these sea lanes, despite the official Germany-first strategy. This grand strategy, promised by
89 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 7. Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 84. Admiral Nimitz also became CinCPOA by direction of the JCS on March 9, 1942. 91 Admiral King had this changed to COMinCH because CinCUS sounded like "sink us." 92 John H. Bradley with Jack W. Dice, West Point Military History Series: The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific (New York: Avery Publishing Group, 1989), 47. 93 The JCS met for the first official time on February 9, 1942. This organization was the highest level of military planning in the United States, subject only to the President and the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff (a similar inter-Allied organization revolving around the Americans and British). 94 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 84. 95 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 84. 44
President Franklin D. Roosevelt to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Arcadia Conference, re-affirmed America's pre-war planning that prioritized Germany's defeat over Japan's.96 Yet, during the first six months of 1942, the immediate threats to European colonies in the South Pacific were more tangible to the Western Allies than German threats, which had stalled in Eastern Europe.97 With this, an informal Japan-first strategy appeared in early 1942. The Army and Army Air Force were adamant about building-up forces in Britain for actions against Germany. However, Admiral King was able to utilize the potential and real threats that Japan held over Australia as an impetus to pursue a limited Japan-first strategy.98 So the Army was forced to help, as evidenced when they moved slightly under 80,000 troops, between January and April, to various Pacific bases instead of Britain.99 It is important to recognize that the Army's General Douglas MacArthur, for different reasons than Admiral King, applied significant pressure on General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, to increase priority of the Pacific War. General MacArthur's commanding personality and prominence in the public media also helped to build the case for a limited Japan-first strategy. As for the Navy, Admiral King's first act as CinCUS on December 30, 1941, was an order to Admiral Nimitz.100 This order contained two main tasks, both revolving around maintaining what the Allies already held: one, the sea lanes from continental US to the Hawaiian Islands; and two, the sea lanes from the Hawaiian Islands to the American possession of Eastern (or American) Samoa.101 These two sea lanes, the "Hawaiian-Samoan Line," were virtually synonymous with the communication lines and supply route to Australia. If this line was breeched, communication and supply to
Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Random House, 1990), 6. 97 Although the u-boat threat in the Atlantic was quite real, the British victory in the Battle of Britain negated a German invasion of the British Isles. Admiral King did, of course, officially support the Germany-first strategy, but one without a great disparity between the two theatres. By the end of the global conflict, the Army had sixty-one divisions in the Europe, seven in the Mediterranean, and twenty-one in the Pacific from Richard C. Anderson, Jr. "US Army in World War II: Introduction and Organization," 2000,
Australia would be lost. Numerous islands stood between Eastern Samoa and Australia, and they held potentially serious threats to Australian survival. Admiral King realized the need to buildup Eastern Samoa before advances could be made into the island groups lying between Eastern Samoa and Australia. hi addition, the British- owned New Hebrides lay between the Fijis and Nouvelle Caledonie, and all would become dangerous if grabbed by the Japanese and or if the colonial French governments sided with Vichy France instead of the Free French. Eastern Samoa, by itself, lacked plausible defensibility. So, Western (or British) Samoa and lies Wallis also needed to be built up to ensure the overall safety of the Samoan Islands. Negotiations with New Zealanders in Apia, on Upola (the main island in Western Samoa), and the Free French in Noumea, Nouvelle Caledonie were successful for the Navy: the New Zealanders had already taken up various British Polynesian responsibilities and Noumea wisely disavowed Vichy France.1 The only threats now would come from the Japanese. The 2nd Marine Division had already sent elements to garrison Eastern Samoa when the 1st Marine Division was ordered to prepare elements for the defense of Western Samoa and lies Wallis. Still in New River in March 1942, the Division organized the 3rd Marine Brigade, comprising of the lx Marines and the 1st Battalion of the 11th Marines (1-11), for Western Samoa and lies Wallis.105 The 7th Marines, stripped from the Division on March 21, 1942, sailed to Samoa from Norfolk, Virginia on April 10 and arrived May 8. They did not rejoin the Division until late-September on Guadalcanal. The beginning of 1942 was tough on the 1st Marine Division. When (then Major-General) Alexander A. Vandegrift took over the Division on March 23, it stood at about 11,000 men but needed to be near 19,000 to be considered at full strength.106 Amphibious training continued on the eastern seaboard, but in the safer waters of the
Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 87. 03 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 88. Gordon L. Rottman in World War IIPacific Island Guide: A Geo-Military Study (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002) explained that "The Fiji Islands are customarily referred to simply as 'Fiji' rather than 'the Fijis' as is common for most island groups" (92-93). 104 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 89-90, and Clifford M. Zierer, "The Geographic Background," The Southwest and the War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1974), 19. 105 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 90. 106 General Vandegrift had taken over from Major-General Philip Torrey who commanded the Division when Major-General Holland Smith was elevated to Atlantic Fleets (McMillan, 15). 46
Chesapeake Bay area. German u-boats were having striking success on the US eastern seaboard, particularly off of North Carolina, but the u-boats were less likely to succeed in the Chesapeake Bay area. New River began to be flooded with hundreds of new recruits arriving daily. The older men, called "The Old Breed" because they were part of the Division prior to Pearl Harbor, were now the progenitors of the battalions and informally charged with teaching the hordes of patriotic youth the realities of infantry training and Marine Corps life. In mid-April the Division, minus the departed 7th Marines and 1-11, was ordered to head to Wellington, New Zealand, as soon as possible. Since General Vandegrift, and everyone else in authority (like the transport quartermaster in Norfolk), believed this was simply a move from base to base, the transports were not combat- loaded—meaning that men and equipment were haphazardly packed wherever there
i r\n was space on over a dozen ships. For actual invasions, transports were meticulously loaded, taking into account what needed to be removed first from the ship in terms of combat priorities; for instance, ammunition before sea bags. The original popular historian of the 1st Marine Division, George McMillan, illustrated this by noting that the Division's engineer battalion and the artillery regiment were loaded onto six different ships, and completely mixed between two echelons.108 At the time it did not matter because it was just a move from base to base, and because General Vandegrift had been promised that his Division would not be needed until January 1, 1943.109 So, without worry, General Vandegrift boarded his ship on May 19, 1942. The remainder, and majority of the Division, was now departing the western hemisphere. By the time the Division was embarking, the Japanese were still advancing across the Pacific, having not yet suffered the crushing defeat at the Battle of Midway (June 1942). By the spring of 1942 they had completed conquering the Netherlands Indies, including the northern half of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. The Japanese centered their South Pacific power at Rabaul, on the eastern tip of New Britain. On May 2, 1942, the Japanese occupied small Tulagi Island,
McMillan, 15 and 16. McMillan, 16. McMillan, 15, and Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 2. 47 the seat of power in the Solomon Islands, just north of Guadalcanal.110 At first the Japanese gave Guadalcanal no attention save cattle raids. On June 8, taking their time, the Japanese landed unopposed on Guadalcanal and started building a wharf. On July 6, twelve ships disgorged the 11th and 13th Construction Units}11 There were now "several hundred Japanese marines and about 2000 construction men [who] were
117 building an airfield." The potential of this airstrip was awesome: it would create a giant radius in which the Japanese air force, once it arrived from Rabaul (the major aerodrome of the South Pacific), could attack the Hawaii-Samoa Line. In addition, the air force would be able to protect invasion forces against Nouvelle Caledonie, the New Hebrides, the Fijis, lies Wallis, the Samoan Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. And the airstrip was just the beginning, as on July 8 the Americans became aware of a cleared area on northern Guadalcanal fit for an entire aerodrome. In fact, the JCS had predicted what Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), the governing military body in Tokyo (subject only to Emperor Hirohito's will), had in mind. On May 18, 1942 the IGHQ had ordered its Seventeenth Army to capture parts of Nouvelle Caledonie, the Fijis, and the Samoan Islands.114 The invasions, planned for June, were postponed because of the defeats at the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway, and then altogether cancelled in July.115 The carrier and plane losses at Midway negated such maneuvers eastward. But the plans to build Guadalcanal's airstrip and Tulagi's major seaplane base remained.116 The JCS discovered the existence of Guadalcanal's
Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942-February 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 12. Hereinafter Morrison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal. 111 Frank, 31. 112 Saburo Hayashi in collaboration with Alvin D. Cook, Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1978 [1951]), 58. Hayashi noted "the Japanese possessed no 'Marines' in the true American sense. The Rikusentai (Naval Landing Force) consisted entirely of sailors under Navy officers trained at the Army's Infantry School" {Kogun, 203). 113 "Division Bulletin, Enemy Information," July 21, 1942, 3, File 7, Box 73, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Grey Research Center, Quantico, VA, and "Division Bulletin, Enemy Situation," August 5, 1942, 1, File 7, Box 73, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Grey Research Center, Quantico, VA. 114 Kogun, 51. For a detailed explanation of Emperor Hirohito's political life and war involvement, please see Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). 115 Bradley, 121. 116 Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 1. 48
airstrip on July 4 when an Allied reconnaissance plane spotted it. However, as early as 117 February they had been planning the seizure of Tulagi. If Japanese plans worked out for Port Moresby, Australia would be isolated and weak. Also, the Japanese air force was not be underrated, as it was one of the key elements to the impressive Japanese expansion—the ability to concentrate overwhelming air superiority, and then for that air superiority to cover invasion forces.118 Besides Guadalcanal's developing airstrip, Admiral King wanted Tulagi's harbor "as an additional bastion to the America-Australia lifeline" and as both a point to halt Japanese expansion and as the springboard to Rabaul. An airstrip on Guadalcanal threatened the very lifelines to Australia that the Navy and Army had just spent months trying to build up. This potential to cut the lifelines to Australia was acutely felt in both Canberra and Washington, not to mention Wellington and London. Since Pearl Harbor, Australia's Prime Minister John Curtin had demanded the return of at least two of the four of his divisions.120 Alas, the British argued, shipping realities from the Middle East or Malaya back to Australia made this impossible. In addition, the withdrawal of these troops from the Middle East would compromise Allied interests there.121 To smooth over these tensions, President Roosevelt had the Army send four infantry divisions to the region.122 President Roosevelt continued by assuring Prime Minister Churchill, on February 15, that America would take responsibility for 1 9^ Australia and New Zealand, so as ANZAC troops did not have to be removed. The Battle of Midway solved most of these problems by stripping Japan of its ability for further conquest. Whether the urgent need to secure Australia's safety derived from race-thinking, political calculations, or an excuse for Admiral King (and General MacArthur) to
Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 12. 118 Bradley, 92. 119 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 12. Bougainville ended up providing this. 120 Frank, 10. One division was in Malaya while the other three were in the Middle East. 121 Frank, 10, and Lundstrom, 20. 122 In mid-February the 41st Infantry Division was sent to Australia, followed in mid-March by the 37th Infantry Division. The Americal Division was established in Nouvelle Caledonie and the 32n Infantry Division was sent to New Zealand (Frank, 10-11 and Lundstrom, 20). A fifth division was soon to follow. The Americal Division sent its 164th Infantry Regiment to Guadalcanal on October 13, marking the first Army ground units on Guadalcanal. 123 Frank, 10. ANZAC, from the Great War, refers to Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. 49 pursue a limited Japan-first strategy, we might never know. Admiral King's writings were scant, but he did note that "from the outset of the war, it had been evident that the protection of our lines of communication to Australia and New Zealand represented a 'must.'"124 This promise was developed back at the Arcadia Conference (held in Washington, DC, December 1941 to January 1942) when the US committed to the Joint Boards' proposed tasks for the Associated Powers. As noted for the Far East Area: "1. Support the defense of the Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies, Australia, and New Zealand, building up bases as necessary."126 At Arcadia, on December 23, 1941, President Roosevelt had assured that there would be a buildup of US forces in Australia.127 With the fall of the Philippines and the Netherlands Indies months later, only Australia, New Zealand, and some adjacent islands were still in Allied control in the South Pacific. When the JCS found out about the Guadalcanal airstrip, the only major unit with relevant amphibious warfare training they had available to them, conveniently already debarked, was the 1st Marine Division. Also, since the Army was desperate to start building up its forces in Britain, the duties of its divisions in the Pacific were limited to passive defense only.128 This related to the massive strain on the limited US supplies in 1942. If the Army divisions were to become offensive, their demands for reinforcements and additional supplies would be too great, not to mention the need for air power, which was particularly coveted by General Henry H. Arnold's Army Air Force. In fact, General Arnold was so ardent about the Germany-first strategy as to be "begrudging [of] every plane and man sent to the Pacific."129 Also, General Marshall, by the summer of 1942, had become frustrated with Admiral King's apparent Japan- first strategy and did not want to support any Navy offenses in the Pacific that
124 "First Official Report to the Secretary of the Navy, March 1, 1944," The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1947), 526. Here Admiral King was probably working from multiple incentives: the strategic importance of Australia as a base, political wooing of Australia and New Zealand to strengthen the US in the Pacific, the desire to keep white colonies from falling to an Asian power, and the justifying of a soft Japan-first strategy by rediscoursing Australia as 'the most threatened Allied.' 125 Hayes, 39. "Associate Powers" was the early terminology for "the Allies." 126 Hayes, 39. 127 Hayes, 40. 128 Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 2. 50 jeopardized Operation Bolero.1 ° But Admiral King did not mind using his 1st Marine Division—amphibiously trained and never intended for garrisoning duties. On July 2, 1942 the JCS ordered Admiral Nimitz to seize "Tulagi Harbor, Santa Cruz Island, and nearby areas in the southern Solomons on August l."131 Operation Watchtower was born, with the original purpose being the seizure of New Britain, New Ireland, and New Guinea.132 Since Guadalcanal's airstrip-to-be was discovered two days later, it immediately became the primary objective of the mission (along with Tulagi Harbor). The 1st Marine Division was the most prepared offensive unit available to the Navy. But before any of this information became available to the Division, they had to endure the journey to New Zealand.
The Long Voyage to New Zealand ~ Life at sea did not turn out to be a major environmental experience, but the poor living conditions continued the processes of de-civilization started at boot camp and intensified at infantry training. Here the men had to endure cramped quarters, poor food, a lack of cleanliness for twenty-five to twenty-nine days, and sea-sickness. There were also several notable experiences with the forces of Nature at sea, particular storms, and one of the few pleasant natural experiences, observing aquatic life. In mid-May 1942, the 5th Marines and 11th Marines departed the east coast from Norfolk, Virginia. They traveled south along the seaboard with escorts attempting to deter German submarines, uneventfully made their way through the Panama Canal, and then headed ever south to New Zealand. In mid-June the 1st Marines took a different route to New Zealand, leaving the east coast for the west coast by troop trains. San Francisco, their point of embarkation, was generally a short and pleasant stay for the 1st Marines. From there they boarded ships. Leaving the United States was a first for the vast majority of Marines, as most were too young and poor during the Depression for overseas travel. This was not only a departure for war, but in most cases, the first departure ever from their known world. This heightened the sense of 'the adventure of war.' For most men, this was the first
130 Frank, 15. The US build-up in Britain. 131 Bradley, 121-122, and Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 12. 132 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 12. 51 trip outside of the US. As Jim Johnston noted in his candid memoir, "[fjor me, though it was sad to part from the folks and a bit overwhelming to leave all the civilized things I
1 "^ was used to, I truly thought I was embarking on a great adventure." Being a great adventure was in part defined by just how foreign new lands were. Departing the homeland, especially aboard a ship, imparted an unmatched sense of smallness and isolation on the men. As Jim Johnston noted about this time, "[w]e sailed alone. No company. No escort. When we had been out a couple of weeks and there was nothing but water in every direction as far as the eye could see, the ship that had seemed so large when I boarded it began to seem very small."134 Compared to the individual, a ship was a large structure. Yet compared to the open sea the ship was minute, and the individual that much smaller. Peter Schrijvers termed this the "tyranny of space" for those "crossing the Pacific to reach the war."135 The Pacific Ocean, after all, covers 162,250,000 million square kilometers of Earth's surface and is the largest and deepest ocean—in addition to being the single largest feature on the planet.136 For reference, the Pacific Ocean covers an area "eighteen times larger than the United States, one-third of the world's surface and more than the earth's total land area." Johnston expressed how travel by sea forced a change in perspective about scale and size. He wrote "[s]everal days out, we ran into a storm. In the fierce winds and huge swells of the sea, the little Mormac Wren seemed even smaller." Nature's fury aided in conveying just how small and isolated they were. If a ship was an impressive feat of human engineering on a large scale, then the ability of the wind and waves to compromise its structural stability and safety placed in perspective their smallness in the face of Nature. The common effect that this change in perspective of scale had was a manifestation of a strong sense of personal and collective isolation from the rest of their world. As William Schwacha recorded, "there is no moon, and everything is hushed and weird but one can pick out the shape of the ships as we sail on through the dark
133 Johnston, 18. 134 Johnston, 20. 135 Peter Schrijvers, The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 101. Don Garden, Nature and Human Societies Series: Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2005), 28. 137 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 1. 138 Johnston, 20. 52 night. It gives one a lonely feeling to stand on guard duty on a night like this. It makes you feel alone, yet you're not."139 As an individual, and as a collective, the men were faced with a sense of isolation, despite living in cramped conditions. Isolation helped to affirm that the men were in the unknown, but it also bonded them. Training was arduous, but it was safe from the Japanese enemy. And despite what life at sea lacked in training's laboriousness, the Japanese enemy was now a real possibility. The senses of scale and isolation felt by the Marines were augmented by a third aspect of the sea voyage: its long duration. Bob Stiles commented on this when noting that the train ride for the 1st Marines had seemed long but that the sea voyage subsequently altered this. "Our train ride across the U.S. wasn't bad but it kept dragging on and on. Christ, it must have taken ten days to reach the West Coast, but this was nothing compared to the time we spent on the troopship that took us to New Zealand."140 "The Pacific threw time in disarray"141 and the duration of the voyage confirmed the new sense of scale by demonstrating just how large the Pacific Ocean was by the length traveled. In this the men were also imbued with a real sense that they had left their civilization and were traveling to the unknown. The tangible affect of this was that being so separated from their civilization they became culturally disconnected. The vast ocean destroyed "the imposed order of human occupation"142 Isolation of the collective, via the ship in comparison to the surrounding ocean, was an unavoidable conclusion for those standing at the deck's rail looking outwards. However, and with notable irony, there was no physical isolation from each other. Life on the ship was crowded. Consequently, sleeping conditions were perhaps the most negative manifestation of the crowdedness. The first problem was the close proximity of one Marine's bunk to another. Not only was the vertical distance so small as to reduce the basic comfort of switching one's sleeping position, the horizontal distances between bunks, the walkway, was also as small, being about the length of a ruler. Anthony Chillemi observed that "we were crowded into dank, smelly holds that held
139 William Schwacha, untitled diary (copy sent to author by Robert Shedd on March 6, 2006), 17. Pagination by Robert Shedd. 140 Bob Stiles in Berry, 79. 141 Schrijvers, 102. 142 Schrijvers, 105, citing Samuel Hynes, Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), 160. 53 row after row of four or five tiered bunks. There was barely enough room to turn over when occupying your bunk, and if you rolled a little too far you ended up in bed with another man."143 He continued by recounting that the sleeping quarters were worse at night. "Night time was almost unbearable with so many bodies contributing to the overall discomfort of practically nonexistent ventilation. Consequently, there was a great deal of movement by people to go topside for fresh air."144 The sheer number of bodies radiating heat, in combination with poor ventilation, meant a stifling atmosphere of both temperature and odor. If sleep was obtained, then it ran the probability of being interrupted by all those that who were not asleep. Other problems included the layers of clothing that men were intended to wear. As veteran Charles Frankel noted, "[w]e slept in very crowded bunks with about 1' space between the lower or upper bunks. We usually slept fully clothed and we always had to wear our life preservers which were quite bulky."145 The lavatory situation was no better. Frankel remembered that on his particular ship, someone had creatively rigged a washroom. "Life aboard ship was difficult for the troops as we had to share an outhouse that was built on deck and over the railings."14 Freshwater became an issue as the demand for drinking water occupied the resources available to filtering freshwater. Showering and washing fell into decline. There was a short period each day when the fresh water was turned on so as the men could brush their teeth, shave, and clean their faces, which was considered luxurious. Chillemi described the food situation. "More often than not, we always stood on a wet deck at mess. Sometimes the water reached a point above the soles of our boots."147 Like the sleeping situation, eating was dominated by a congestion of bodies. Schwacha recorded that "they are not very good meals, and the mess hall is very crowded and close. It is a blessed feeling to rush through and out onto open decks after eating."148 Standing to eat was odd, but if the ship rolled it had the affect of throwing the food. Chillemi continued, expressing that "where we took our meals [mess deck]
143 Anthony Chillemi, "Guadalcanal_August 7, 1942 to December 9, 1942," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 5. Hereinafter Chillemi, Guadalcanal. 144 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 5. 145 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 8. 146 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 8. 147 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 5. 148 Schwacha, 14. 54 was hellishly designed so no one would linger over meals. To make matters worse, some people became sick and vomited all over. Yet, the saltier amongst us would continue eating."149 William Kapp recorded daily impressions of life at sea. He noted that sea sickness deterred eating. "June 9 The food on this boat is darn poor. Liver about every third day. Most of the boys are too sick to eat."150 Second helpings were not common, but the men augmented the ship-supplied food with rations, food sent from home, and whatever was purchasable at the canteen.151 Warner Pyne remembered that "[o]ur trip to the Pacific was a horror story in itself. .. .During that entire voyage I don't think we had one decent meal. ...We used to line up at the ship's stores just to buy peanuts."152 The Marines were often struck by motion sickness, better known as sea sickness—a common physiological condition suffered by many, particularly during storms and at the beginning of the voyage.153 Veteran Carl Scott recalled that "I think I was sea-sick the whole time."154 Luckily, most of the men became accustomed. Activities aboard ship, designed to alleviate the boredom and senses of isolation and smallness, had to be conducive to cramped conditions. Entertainment that required little space or equipment flourished. Singing, accompanied by a harmonica if available, was an option, as was gambling in card games. Reading was common and listening to the radio was also standard.155 Rough-housing was also not uncommon as Schwacha remembered that the men took turns hitting each other as hard as possible.156 Aside from games, socializing was the staple entertainment. This created strong bonds between the men as they had time to learn about each others' personal histories. There was some joy to be derived from the time at sea. Henry Paustian remembered watching the aquatic life from the rails of the ship. "Porpoises liked to race
Anthony Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 5. William Kapp, Bill Kapp's War Notes and Memories (sent to author on February 24, 2006 by W. Kapp's daughter Susan K. Anderson), 4. 151 The Navy used the term canteen for a small store, while the Army preferred the PX, meaning post exchange. 152 Warner Pyne in Berry, 64. 153 Kapp, 4. 154 Carl Scott, interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 4, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association 58th Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. 155 Kapp, 3, and Schwacha, 2. 156 Schwacha, 9. 55 alongside the ships and roll out of the water from time to time. I enjoyed watching them and the flying fish." Schwacha noted similar tendencies as he "watched the little flying fish dart in and out, crashing headlong into the waves, and wondered if the little fellows ever hurt themselves. Occasionally a porpoise would swiftly skim through the
1 CO water breaking just at the surface...only to plunge back into the deep sea." More menacing sea creatures also followed the ships as Schwacha recalled that "sharks follow the ship for days, staying out of sight as much as possible. Some time you can see their grey backs as they speed under the surface just clear of the wash of the ship. Searching for bits of food which is thrown overboard at night..."15 This form of passive entertainment allowed the individual an opportunity to turn his attentions away from his deplorable living conditions and focus on the bizarre animals. Perhaps more spectacular was sea life that gave off fluorescent colors. "At night the water here is sprinkled with tiny fluorescent sea life. Sometimes the bow of our ship will pass through a large area of this soft blue, white glowing light."160 There are a variety of organisms that absorb short-wavelength, ultraviolet radiation from the sun. They then emit longer-wavelength, visible light because their electrons are forced to jump to greater states of energy.161 This is typically triggered by heat, in this case light. When the electron returns to its ground state, a photon is released.1 The result is what we see as fluorescence, a process where heat is converted to light. Schwacha continued by noting the beauty of these events: "all one can see is a silhouette of the ship and the black sea and then this burst of color and the lighter shade of black at night... a weird picture, yet beautiful."163 The long voyage to New Zealand had the negative effect of reversing some of the effects of prior physical conditioning. Calisthenics and route marches were not performed onboard the ships. As Bob Stiles recounted, "by the time we reached New
li' Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1. 158 Schwacha, 16. 159 Schwacha, 16. 160 Schwacha, 17. 161 Neil A. Campbell and Jane B. Reece, et al, Biology (San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 2002), 110 and 184. 162 Campbell, Reece, et al, Biology, 184. Electrons and photons are sub-atomic particles. 163 Schwacha, 17. 56
Zealand, we were all out of shape."164 The lack of space negated exercise and the crowdedness produced a lack of activity, a dual blow to the muscles. In mid-June 1942, the advanced echelons of the Division arrived in Wellington. As for environmental experiences, this first of the Pacific islands was not representative. The natural surroundings of the Wellington region were cultivated and the presence of the city itself kept the men in the bosom of accustomed civilization. As McMillan wrote, the "Division had never been stationed near a city the size of Wellington, and not since the fall of 1940 had the men had a satisfactory liberty."165 Of more consequence, though, the six months of training that the Division was supposed to have never materialized. On June 26, General Vandegrift traveled to Auckland to meet his superior, Vice Admiral Ghormley, who informed him that D-Day for Guadalcanal was August 1, 1942—a surprise for both commanders.166 This decision had come from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When this news was received, the rest of the Division (meaning the 1st Marines) were not even in New Zealand yet, expected to land on July ll.167 On top of that, the Navy's relevant task forces and the Division were to conduct rehearsal landings in the Fijis. Working backwards, it would take seven days from Fiji to Guadalcanal, four days in the Fijis for training, and six days from Wellington to the Fijis. (General Vandegrift managed to get another week after pleading). There was a scant five weeks to combat load the transports and devise a battle plan—no small task. After hasty research in Australia by the Division's intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Goettge, a measly nine-sheet map was ready. Loading the transports at Aotea Quay was chaos. Rainfall was heavy and made the men cold, cartons disintegrated, and congestion hampered loading of the loaned lorries.168 In addition, striking New Zealand dock workers meant that it was solely up to the men to load thirty-one ships with sixty days' supplies for 20,000 men. The Division did make its deadline, by dividing the Marines into 300-man teams working eight-hour shifts, around the clock, and by leaving behind a full one-third of all
164 Bob Stiles in Berry, 79. 165 McMillan, 16. 166 This date was changed to August 7, after pleading from Vandegrift (Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 14). 167 McMillan, 18, and Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 239. 168 McMillan, 20. 169 McMillan, 18. 57 supplies.170 All this was in a context that considered a full compliment of supplies to still be "only the barest necessities for operations."171 However, the work teams managed to combat-load the transports for Guadalcanal. Fortunately, the men managed to have their muscles re-strengthened. On July 22, 1942 the Division left New Zealand for the Fijis. From Fiji the subgroups attacking Guadalcanal and Tulagi made their way north-west towards the Solomon Islands. On D-Day there were 956 officers and 18,146 men waiting to commence operations.172 The night before was filled with anxiety for the men cramped in their transports. As Chillemi put it, the "evening of August 6 was one of relentlessness and anxiety for me, as it was for everyone I talked to."173 Nervous about the next day, Chillemi claimed that it was not fear of the upcoming that afflicted men, but the beginnings of the conceptualization of death. "Fear itself was not a factor yet. No one in my immediate group really understood what was about to happen. Fear was a concept not fully understood. .. .Nevertheless, the first inkling that I might die soon began to register in my mind."174 The JCS simply demanded that the airfield on Guadalcanal be neutralized without delay.
170 McMillan, 20. 171 Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 61. '"'McMillan, 23. 173 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 11. 174 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 11-12. 58
Chapter Three I, Jungle: The Grind of Guadalcanal
In 1567, two ships with 100 men set out for new and exotic discoveries in the South Pacific. Under the command of Spaniard Alvaro de Mendana, the Peruvian flotilla found parts of the Solomon Islands in early-1568. The islands were so named because unverifiable stories already spoke of Solomon's Isle.1 The Peruvian administration decided it wanted to replicate New Spain's success in the Philippines with its own venture into the South Pacific. Spain's western hemispheric viceroyalties were the Pacific continuation of the empire's earlier imperial spirit. Mendana's discovery was disappointing compared to the Philippines. But in 1595, after managing to get another trip out of the Peruvian viceroy, Mendana embarked again for the Solomon Islands. Mendana's good luck ran dry as he missed the Solomon Islands. He landed, and died, on Santa Cruz with a failed colony as legacy. The second galleon reached the Solomon Islands only to have its crew die on San Cristobal with about 100 survivors of the 378 expedition making it to Manila to report the story.4 So far, a poor start for Europeans in the Solomon Islands. For the next 170 years, "the Solomon Islands were forgotten. Royal hydrographers assumed that they never existed."5 In 1768, French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville set out to recover some maritime prestige for France after the losses of the Seven Years War (1756-1763). His major discovery was Tahiti, just one year before Briton James Cook arrived. He also explored the two northern most large islands of the Solomon Islands, Choiseul and Bougainville.6 Mendana had only explored the main islands south of Santa Isabel (including Guadalcanal). Sometimes discovery did not translate into colonization as Europeans never really wanted the Solomon Islands. The Solomon Islands, as well as
Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (New York: The Penguin Group, 1998), 36. 2 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942-February 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 7. Hereinafter Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal. Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 6. 4 McEvedy, 42. 5 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 7. Guadalcanal was named after a city near Valencia. 6 McEvedy, 63. 7 McEvedy, 36. 59
North-East New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Marshall Islands were eventually annexed by Germany in their 1884-1885 expedition to kick-start a Pacific empire.8 Actually, Germany only bothered with the northern land masses of the Solomon Islands, making Guadalcanal an obscurity amongst obscurities. Britain eventually picked up the southern Solomon Islands between 1892 and 1902.9 As historian Samuel Morison noted about pre-war Guadalcanal, "[n]one of the apparatus of civilized life was present; there was no lively colonial capital like Suva or Noumea, where one could have relief from savage nature."10 The British colonials did "not even take the trouble to survey them [the Solomon Islands] properly."11 Maps were poor, Europeans only lived on the edge of the jungle, and knowledge about the interior was largely absent. By the 1940s Europeans, Americans, and Australians considered the Solomon Islands to be "pure 'bush' or wilderness." Eric Bergerud called Tulagi "little more than an anchorage, a couple of buildings, and a Union Jack."12 In short, aside from Chinese shops, Anglican palm churches, and a cricket field on Tulagi, the Solomon Islands were as far from accustomed civilization as conceptually possible.
Out of Obscurity ~ On May 2, 1942, just shy of five months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese occupied the island of Tulagi, north of Guadalcanal. This small island had been the British center of power in the Solomon Islands since 1893. For the Japanese, Tulagi was the accompaniment to Port Moresby in New Guinea, the two prongs of their thrust into the South Pacific at the beginning of 1942. In the summer of 1942 the Allies contested the area. The role of geological and meteorological factors, in the traditional narrative of the Battle of Guadalcanal, is subtle but important. Terrain features, in particular, funneled the opposing forces together. The impenetrability of foliage created mass confusion and entire units missed battles.
8 McEvedy, 80. 9McEvedy, 85. 10 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 10. Suva is the capital of the Fijis. 11 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 10, and next citation. 12 Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 58. 60
Two days before D-Day, Japanese signal intelligence recorded Allied transmissions between Noumea and Melbourne.13 The analysts figured Vice Admiral Ghormley was informing the British and/or the Australians of a move into the Solomon Islands or New Guinea. Prudently, they sent the discovery to Rabaul and Truk, where, imprudently, the warnings were not heeded. Luck again appeared for the US Task Force as "heavy clouds and dense rain blanketed" them from Japanese eyes for their approach into the Solomon Islands.14 Once ready to assault in the morning of August 7, 1942, good weather allowed for efficient debarking of the transports. Cargo nets were splayed on both sides of the transports while ship-to-shore traffic went smoothly.15 The invasion of Guadalcanal was virtually uncontested. The Japanese only gave token resistance while Korean laborers fled in the face of fifteen transports disgorging over 11,000 Marines. The target was the partially completed airstrip, just south of Lunga Point, a small delta protruding where the Lunga River met the ocean, the mouth of which was a sand spit. Beach Red, a 1600-yard depression between Lunga Point and Koli Point to the east, was four miles east of the target.16 The 1st and 5th Marines made for their objectives but almost immediately suffered communication, control, and patrolling issues with the jungle terrain severely hampering the 1st Marines.17 The most resistance on D-Day came from the jungle as it engulfed the 1st Marines during their inland maneuvers. The 5th Marines avoided this problem by hugging the beach. Unloading the transports at the beach became a nightmare as the beachmaster lacked sufficient manpower. General Vandegrift did not send any combat units to help, maintaining his troops in formation since they had not made contact with the enemy.18 On D-plus 1, August 8, the 1st and 5th Marines moved towards Lunga Point. The 5th Marines stayed
Henry I. Shaw, Jr., First Offensive: The Marine Campaign For Guadalcanal from the Marines In World War II Commemorative Series (Washington: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1992), 1. Hereinafter Shaw, Jr., First Offensive. 14 Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 1. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase II, "Phase II (from H hour to Evening 9 August), 1, June 1943, Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives and Records Association, "Archive II," College Park, MD. 16 George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), 30. "McMillan, 33. 18 McMillan, 33. 61
to the coconut plantations parallel to the beach while the Is suffered the jungle again. Finally, emerging in the mid-afternoon, the 1st Marines secured the airfield and then held the eastern shore of the Lunga River.19 The 5th Marines stayed east of the airstrip. The amphibious phase was now over, the targets taken, and now over 18,000 Marines were on Guadalcanal and Tulagi (plus Tanambogo and Gavutu Islands, east of Tulagi). On August 8, 1942, Vice Admiral Frank J. Fletcher had a message relayed to his superior, Admiral Ghormley. Admiral Fletcher requested permission for "the immediate withdrawal of my carriers."20 The loss of air cover meant that the safety of Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner's amphibious forces' was compromised. Admiral Turner was vexed by Admiral Fletcher's decision and his men began frantically dumping supplies onto the beach just north of the airstrip. Admiral Fletcher had warned both Admiral Turner and General Vandegrift, during the face-to-face commanders' meeting on July 26 back in the Fijis, that his carriers would stay no longer than forty- eight hours after invasion.21 Both Admiral Turner and General Vandegrift protested, but to no end. Admiral Turner's amphibious force, needing a few more days to empty the Marines' supplies, by August 8 still had protection from its combat components: cruisers and destroyers. That night, an Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) cruiser-destroyer force attacked Turner's three cruiser-destroyer forces positioned adjacent Savo Island (seven miles north of northeastern Guadalcanal). The ensuing Battle of Savo Island was heavily one sided as the IJN, utilizing their night training, suffered fewer than 200 casualties versus the 1300 dead and 700 wounded US sailors.22 For the US Navy it "was one of the worst defeats ever inflicted" in their history.23 Furthermore, for the Marines on shore, the battle "placed the occupation of Guadalcanal in jeopardy and delayed the completion of Operation 'Watchtower' for several months."24 In fact, historian Samuel Morison surmised that if Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, leading the Japanese force, had followed up with an attack on the transports, then Savo Island would have become a
19 McMillan, 40, and Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 11. 20 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 27. 21 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 27. 22 Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 12. 23 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 17. 24 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 17. 62 decisive battle in the Pacific War. Regardless, Admiral Turner's transports could not protect themselves against an almost-certain continuation of IJN attacks. Yet the transports contained vital supplies for the Marines—supplies already reduced. Admiral Turner compromised and ordered his task force to leave in the morning. Robert Leckie recalled the Battle of Savo Island, from the perspective of those on land. "Soon we heard the sound of cannonading, and the island trembled beneath us. There came flashes of light-white and red-and great rocking explosions."26 It was the realization of the loss that stung though; he wrote simply that "[o]ur Navy was gone. Gone." What made abandonment so worrisome for the Marines was that prior examples existed: Guam, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Robert Shedd recalled that "[w]e felt that we were considered expendable. We thought of the men on Bataan and we thought of the great defense and surrender of the defense battalion on Wake Island. We
9R felt that we were headed down that same road." George McMillan recorded a veteran remembering that "there was an awful lot of talk about Bataan."29 For the Japanese, the lack of the US Navy's presence meant that they were readily able to land troops. Being bombarded from the sky and sea became the norm for the Marines. In fact, it forced them closer to the ground, deeper into their foxholes, to spend significant amounts of time in the earth. Suffering bombardment filled the Marines with frustration and fear. Later, Robert Leckie recalled that "we had now such a well-developed fear of airplanes that we would not come above ground so long as the bombers lingered or the shrapnel of anti-aircraft bursts kept falling."30 William Schwacha recorded that "[a] buddie of mine cracked up the other day during a shelling, he started crying and shaking...that makes two buddies to go like that, cry like little children....Everyone's nerves are at the breaking point."31 Night bombing disrupted their sleep and weakened the body. Anthony Chillemi recorded that the Japanese were "quite successful in just keeping us awake. ...Sleep, when it came, was short lived and
25 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 63. 26 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 65. 27 Leckie, 66. 28 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 2. 29 McMillan, 45. 30 Leckie, 103. 31 William Schwacha, untitled diary (copy sent to author by Robert Shedd, March 6, 2006), 44. Pagination by Robert Shedd. 63
disturbed."'2 This was the situation until the various air wings contested the skies, and even then not during the night. The rainy morning of August 9 found exhausted senior officers meeting with General Vandegrift to discuss their situation. The Guadalcanal mission now converted into three tasks. Foremost was the completion of the airstrip, Guadalcanal's importance and the key to long-term success. The subsequent defense of the airstrip became General Vandegrift's primary goal. Through labor and the use of the abandoned Japanese equipment, the 2660 foot airstrip (newly christened Henderson Field), was completed on August 12 and extended to 3778 feet by August 18.34 The second task was to get the supplies off Beach Red and to disperse and hide them inside the new perimeter. Through a procession of vehicles shuttling for days, this was also accomplished by August 12.35 On the same day, after food supplies were inventoried, rationing went into affect, meaning a two-meal per day diet. This diet was heavily supplemented by the Japanese food stocks, and was predicted to last only a month. Last was to bring in the troops from other islands and to dig in around the new perimeter, an oval line around Henderson Field, from the ridges west of Kukum (both village and creek) to the Tenaru River on the east. Early in September the Division realized that the food situation could turn into a crisis. The rations that made it ashore were insufficient to last long, but the captured Japanese food was supplementing the diet. Despite rationing to two meals per day, Guadalcanal was never the "starvation island" that it has sometimes been portrayed as.38 Contemporaries recorded that "enemy supplies were the difference between a on starvation diet and one well above that point in caloric value during the early phases."
Anthony Chillemi, "Guadalcanal_August 7, 1942 to December 9, 1942," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 12. Hereinafter Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 20. 33 Shaw, First Offensive, 16. 34 McMillan, 49, and Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Random House, 1990), 127. 35 Frank, 126, and Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 68. 36 Frank, 127, and Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 67, and for previous sentence. 37 Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 13. 38 "Ch. 2: Starvation Island: Guadalcanal" in Patrick O'Donnell, Into the Rising Sun: In Their Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat (New York: The Free Press, 2003 [2002]) and Eric Hammel, Guadalcanal: Starvation Island (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987). 39 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 1, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. 64
After six weeks on Guadalcanal, the regular three meals per day ration was reintroduced. Refrigeration finally came to the island, as did fresh fruits and vegetables, and frozen meats started to arrive but were prioritized for pilots. The US Navy finally reappeared when three transports arrived on August 15 bringing aerial material and servicemen.40 On August 20, the Division was ecstatic when two air squadrons landed.41 This signaled the end of abandonment, although reinforcements started only as a trickle. The Marines, and Army units that joined the campaign later, repulsed four major assaults by Japanese troops, occurring about once a month starting in mid- August.42 The first land response by Japan's Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ) was to order Lieutenant-General Harukichi Hyakutake to recapture Guadalcanal and Tulagi, with elements of the new divided 17th Army.43 Unfortunately for General Hyakutake, the various units were widely dispersed across the Pacific and Asia. One unit was immediately ready though, Colonel Kiyoano Ichiki's 28th Infantry Regiment (known as the Ichiki Detachment) was standing in Guam. Colonel Ichiki landed first with 900 men, and without pause, brazenly plowed into the jungle and headed west without waiting for his second echelon (of about 1100 men).45 His plan was simple: circle south of Henderson Field to attack the Marines on their south-eastern flank.4 To be fair, the Japanese did not believe that a whole US division had been landed. In the dark morning of August 21, half of the Ichiki Detachment struck 2-1 where Alligator Creek (a tidal lagoon hosting crocodiles) approached the ocean.47 The fighting was intense; sometimes the lines blurred and hand-to-hand combat ensued, but by morning's light the Japanese were repulsed.
Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 67. 41 McMillan, 56-57. The two air squadrons arrived with nineteen fighters and twelve bombers. 42 Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 123. 43 Frank, 143. 44 Frank, 143. Kiyoano Ichiki was a main figure in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937. When the Japanese Imperial Army moved into Chinese territory, Ichiki's company fought with Chinese units at the bridge. The action helped to precipitate war between Japan and China. As Frank noted, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident "is often marked as the beginning of World War Two" (Frank, 145). 45 McMillan, 59, and Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 70. 46 McMillan, 59. 47 McMillan, 61, and Frank, 150. Note: Alligator Creek was the delta area of the Ilu River, not the Tenaru River. The Tenaru was just to the east of the Ilu, but many Marine maps had misnamed the river. Both names are used to denote the battle. 65
Colonel Ichiki's men had over-exposed themselves during frontal attacks against prepared positions compounded by artillery support. Marine losses were 108 killed and wounded, while the Japanese suffered at least 777 dead.48 Later that day 1-1 crossed the creek, and then the Tenaru River, to annihilate the second echelon. A milestone had been reached; the Japanese had been destroyed on land.49 September's main action was the Marine victory during the Battle for Bloody Ridge, which witnessed particularly intense combat on the evenings of the 12th and 13th. The 1st Raider Battalion (with the remnants of the 1st Parachute Battalion), having returned from the September 8 Tasimboko raid, and having had little rest since they landed on Tulagi August 7, were bivouacked in the ridges south of Henderson Field. Although this area was considered relatively safe, the southern part of the perimeter had presented a problem to General Vandegrift that he never quite solved. He described the environment of this area as "terrain so bewildering as to beggar description." The kunai grass-covered ridges would have made ideal defenses if they ran parallel to the coast, but they ran perpendicular to Henderson Field, like a mile-long arrow into the heart of the perimeter.51 The Raiders thought they were getting some well-earned rest, but these ridges were directly on the path of the newest Japanese assault. The 35th Infantry Brigade (Reinforced), led by Major-General Kiyotake Kawaguchi (the Kawaguchi Brigade), had long left the Palau Islands for its Guadalcanal assignment by early September. The Kawaguchi Brigade's bold plan put the entire operation into jeopardy by driving both at the airstrip and at the perimeter's weakest point. As Patrick K. O'Donnell noted, a "breakthrough along the ridge would result in the capture of the landing strip and lead to the loss of Guadalcanal."52 By the end of daylight on
48 Frank, 156. The Battle of Tenaru River was also a medical milestone. This was the last point where battle casualties out numbered cases of diseases, the majority of which were environmentally-based. From "Chapter III: The Solomons: Section 1, Guadalcanal," History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, (Washington: 1946), 15, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, Washington. Hereinafter History of the Medical Department in World War II. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 11, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 126. 52 O'Donnell, 40. 66
September 13,2000 troops of the Kawaguchi Brigade flung themselves at the Raiders, 400 strong. The Japanese came in successive waves and overran forward positions. When the Raiders pulled themselves back, the lll Marines unleashed their ordnance on the Japanese.54 As daylight grew stronger, the Japanese attacks grew weaker—until at last they ceased. In terms of battle casualties, the Raider victory was stunning: 144 killed, wounded, and missing versus 600 dead and 600 wounded Japanese on the ridge. Hundreds of Japanese died on other parts of the perimeter and the remaining melted into the jungle. The September Offensive, like the August Offensive, ended in a crushing defeat for the Japanese. On September 18, the 7th Marines (with 1-11) finally rejoined the Division, from garrisoning duty in Eastern Samoa, and were transferred to the east.55 Separate naval forces also landed that day, bringing the first ammunition supplies since D-Day.56 It was discovered that General Hyakutake had sent the 2nd Infantry (Sendai) Division to Guadalcanal. The increase in troop strength reflected the rise in stakes as General Hyakutake, on October 9, personally landed on Guadalcanal to oversee the conduct of the Sendai Division.5* He told IGHQ that the circumstances were "far more aggravated than had been estimated."59 On October 14, General Masao Maruyama led 7000 men of his Sendai Division into the jungle.60 General Maruyama's group was repeating the maneuver of the Kawaguchi Brigade, circling south of the perimeter to attack north onto Bloody Ridge. Alone, 1-7 defended Bloody Ridge, until joined by 3-164 (a National Guard unit recently landed), as Maruyama's troops slammed into them near midnight on the 24th.61 Fighting was close as the Japanese managed to penetrate US lines, but were eventually
53 McMillan, 76, and Shaw, First Offensive, 25. 54 McMillan, 79-80. 55 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 12. Shaw, First Offensive, 28. 57 Shaw, First Offensive, 29. Sendai is a city in eastern Honshu. Japanese divisions were not normally given this type of title (a city name) but being raised in the 1871 made the 2nd Division one of a few units of such old heritage. 58 Samuel B. Griffith, II, The Battle for Guadalcanal (New York: Ballantine Books, 1963), 174. 59 Griffith, 175, citing Colonel Takushiro Hattori, of the Army General Staff, 1941-45, and author of The Complete History of the Great East Asia War (1953). 60 Shaw, First Offensive, 34-35. 61 3-164 was the reserve battalion of the Army's 164th Infantry Regiment, made up of National Guardsmen from North Dakota. They had landed on October 13, during the heaviest Japanese shelling. 67 beaten back. The next night saw the same maneuvers with a similar outcome. To the west, 2-7 defeated three assaults by counter-attacking penetrations. US losses were about 300 killed and wounded, hi total the Sendai Division suffered 3500 dead with seriously wounded men probably dying in the jungle as the remnants fled62—and so October ended, no better than September or August for the Japanese. The end of October and beginning of November saw a massive influx of US reinforcements to Guadalcanal. The Japanese also continued to build up forces (in western Guadalcanal), even siphoning troops from the Port Moresby offensive. On November 14, Japanese naval forces delivered units of the 38th Division, 10,000 strong, to Guadalcanal. However, they suffered such high losses from American naval and aerial attacks, that thereafter Rabaul never again significantly reinforced Guadalcanal.63 The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 11-15, was the turning point of the campaign and meant that US supplies now flowed onto the island while the "Tokyo Express" (tunneled through Rabaul) dissipated. Also, the 1st Marine Division could now be replaced, a requirement due to the toll malaria was taking. On December 9, General Vandegrift passed authority to General Alexander M. Patch, of the Army's Americal Division.64 Guadalcanal taught the Marines that Japanese "bamboo spear tactics" (or pre- banzai charges) was an efficient way in which to kill the enemy. The Japanese, as military scholar Richard Frank summed up, "displayed amazing failure to grasp the dominance of automatic weapons and artillery in modern war."65 Their reliance on their perceived racial superiority clouded tactical and physical realities. They believed that their elan was enough to push the Americans, and their reliance on technology, into the ocean. Thus columns of infantry rushing the Marines in full frontal assaults only ever accomplished small, temporary penetrations, at best, and at the cost of massive casualties to themselves. This is how the disproportionate battle casualties can be accounted for: Japanese cultural conceptions attempted to defy physics. Their spirit never overcame bullets. Their movement of "dense columns of infantry along terrain
Shaw, First Offensive, 38. Shaw, First Offensive, 45. McMillan, 135. Frank, 608. 68 lines leading to the objective," as Vandegrift described their tactics, was simply unrealistic, a cultural residue of medieval samurai code favoring fast and decisive action.
First Impressions ~ For the Marines on the ground, the regimental maneuverings were subject to scuttlebutt. Their first two days on Guadalcanal were dominated by formulating impressions of the environment and the war to date. On the morning of August 7, 1942, Bob Stiles was awoken by an announcement on the ship's speaker system. He recalled that "at about 3 a.m. on August 7, we got the word. 'NOW HEAR THIS—NOW HEAR THIS!' came over the loud-speaker. 'You are going to have steak sandwiches for breakfast. This will be your last meal before debarking. Good luck!'" However, pleasure of a hardy breakfast was not to be found amongst the anxiety-ridden Marines. Chillemi recalled that "[n]o one on deck talked, everyone seemed to whisper."68 The island of Guadalcanal hosted a jungle unlike any type of climate in continental America. With the exception of a tiny smattering of actual combat veterans, the majority of Marines did not know what to expect.69 Fortunately, many of the senior officers had gained jungle experience in Latin America during the 1910s and 1920s. As for the men, Anthony Chillemi recalled that "[n]one of the people in our group had ever heard of the place, let alone know it's [sic] location."70 The amount of anxiety just prior to invasion was reflected in the resurgence of motion sickness that morning. The big breakfast given to the Marines, unfortunately, tended to reappear during the choppy sea ride. Bob Stiles remembered that "[w]e had to keep circling our mother ship waiting our turn to hit the beach and, hell, some of the guys starting getting seasick. One guy would puke and he'd start a chain reaction. The combination of the rolling ship and the stink of that second-hand breakfast steak could get anyone going. ...It was just a
Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 11. 67 Bob Stiles in Berry, 8, and Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 12. 68 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 12. 69 Shaw, Jr., First Offensive, 6. Some combat veterans had seen actions in the Great War (the 5th Marines being one of two Marine regiments in the American Expeditionary Force). Most combat veterans prior to Guadalcanal, which was few, had fought in Central America/Caribbean. 0 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 10. 69 mess."71 The supporting armada did give some sense of comfort. Bob Stiles recalled that it "looked like the whole U.S. Navy was supporting us. We had company. It gave 77 us all a comfortable feeling." This sense of support against such a tangible unknown made the subsequent abandonment by the Navy that much harder to endure. First impressions of Guadalcanal tended to reflect how awe-struck the Marines were at the magnitude of the land. The anxiety of their first beach assault had meant that the men were focused on their combat roles, their minds steeped in personal reflection and on their training. After the immediate threat of the Japanese dissipated, many realized the breadth of the alien wilderness. Some first impressions revolved around perceived splendor and beauty of the new land. William Schwacha noted after the beach landing that "I noticed how warm it was and how wet my shoes and pants were."73 Continuing, he "noticed as we slowly worked our way through the jungle how beautiful nature had painted this wild tropical Paradise." Schwacha seemed particularly impressed by the butterflies. "Huge butterflies, the largest I have ever seen caught my eye as they danced gaily amid the heavy foliage, their delicate wings were measured in inches, steel blue, soft browns, and Ivory whites, with streaks of black marked their beauty." The unfamiliar aesthetics of the jungle had captured Schwacha's consciousness as he temporarily "forgot that there was a war going on and that the enemy lie waiting for us somewhere ahead. All I could think was how pretty and peaceful this Island could be if only war, men, shells, bombs, and machine guns were not on its soft, rich, black soil."74 Here was one of the Marine's responses to nature in comparison to the Japanese. When the apparent threat of the Japanese decreased, their focus on their environmental surroundings increased. The effects of environmental adversities were often stronger during combat, when the men were focused on more immediate life-and- death situations. However, at those points, their memories tend to focus on the carnality of combat. When there was an absence of combat, the interaction with the environment demanded significant conscious attention. 71 Bob Stiles in Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World Warll (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 80. 72 Bob Stiles in Berry, 80. 73 Schwacha, 24, and next two quotes. 74 Schwacha, 24. 70
Robert Leckie, with the Is Marines, had a similar experience to Schwacha's. In the midst of heightened awareness, Leckie had a brief moment where he took a "glimpse of palm fronds swaying gently above, the most delicate and exquisite sight I have ever seen."75 When a lack of D-Day opposition became apparent, the Marines started to attend to the thousands of coconuts strewn on the beaches and abandoned coconut plantations.76 They "went on husking the nuts, cracking the shells, drinking the cool sweet coconut milk."77 This was short-lived however, as within minutes they moved inland, first into the coconut groves and then into the jungle. Leckie recalled that "[w]e plodded through the heat-bathed patches of kunai grass. We crossed rivers. We recrossed them. We climbed hills. We got into the jungle."78 He remembered feeling "lost every step of the way" and at one instance noted that officers were "bending anxiously over a map....It was a lying map and it got us into more trouble from the outset." As Bergerud noted, in "a world without reliable maps, traveling a very short distance was a problem."80 It is important to recognize that Melanesian guides compensated for a profound lack of knowledge by the Allies (and pre-war colonizers) concerning the South Pacific. Friendly to the Allies because of pre-war
01 colonial ties and due to the "heavy hand of the Japanese occupation," many Melanesians helped where they could. In such a bewildering environment, their guidance and reconnaissance were vital. That first day's trek was particularly arduous for the 1st Marines (the 5th Marines stayed near the gentler beaches and plantations). Experiencing Guadalcanal's heat, Leckie recalled that for "the first time in my life I was experiencing real thirst. The heat, and now the dripping, enervating forest, seemed to have dehydrated me." Less than a few hours on Guadalcanal were enough to change his perception of thirst. Since the marching up to that point had yielded no water supply, Leckie was afraid to deplete
75 Leckie, 58. In the context of northern Guadalcanal, "plantations" is synonymous with "groves." 77 Leckie, 59. 78 Leckie, 59. 79 Leckie, 60. 80 Bergerud, 114. 81 Bergerud, 114. Please see 104 to 118 in Touched With Fire for a brief discussion on aborigine contributions in the South Pacific. 71 his canteens. Suddenly they found a river, and "with incautious shouts we fell upon her. She dissolved us, this river." The combination of entering natural beauty and bringing destruction created within Schwacha a sorrow as he lamented that "all I can say is that it is too bad we have to destroy, lay to waste, all of Nature's and God's work."83 After moving about three- quarters of a mile inland, Schwacha's company, often firing at thicker foliage and animal-rustles, arrived upon a stagnant stream. Schwacha recalled its beauty and described the scene. "Its waters were still, huge rich green leaves glistened in the bright sunlight. Lofty trees with long dangling vines, and slight tints of pink were the colors of the smaller flowers. Colorful parrots, red and purple, screeching in the high tree tops darting in and out as if they wondered what we were doing disturbing their peaceful sanctuary. I wondered myself."84 The majority of Marines did not yet know combat or what a contested landing was like, so their first impressions of Guadalcanal became dominated by the foreign environment. Anthony Chillemi, a pharmacist's mate, recounted D-Day on Guadalcanal. His first sensory experience with Guadalcanal was aromatic. When his transport rounded the western edge of the island, Chillemi remembered that he "began to smell the island. The atmosphere seemed to be heavy with a rotten-sweet odor of dime-store tropically scented perfume. It wasn't a scent I would soon forget."85 Once on the beach Chillemi recalled D-Day as a realization that the environment was a form of enemy. As was true for other Marines, the lack of Japanese resistance meant that the foreignness was their focus. Chillemi noted that "[w]e on the beach became the target of two other enemies- vicious and hungry mosquitoes and an unfriendly and hostile environment."86 The mosquitoes were particularly taxing as it "was almost impossible to protect yourself from swarms of mosquitoes and their unrelenting and persistent attacks."87 Mosquitoes on Guadalcanal proved to be one of the toughest adversities. That first week of mosquito bites established malaria as a major problem, although this was not seen
82Leckie, 61. 83 Schwacha, 24. 84 Schwacha, 24. Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 12. Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 13. 8 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 13. 72
immediately. For the individual at the moment, it was "a combination of heat extremes, high humidity, constant heavy rain, mosquitoes and other insects and pests [that] made the misery index go ballistic. It seemed we would not get dry or comfortable; this was just the beginning."88 Chillemi's insights illustrate that immediately the Marines realized that their natural surroundings were more than just the setting. Actions so basic at home were now ordeals in the jungle—like achieving grip when walking. "The terrain of Guadalcanal seemed composed of steel, over which the demons of the jungle had spread a thin treacherous slime. Our feet were forever churning for a purchase on these undulating paths."89 Leckie also briefly described the composition of the soil. "It was like digging into a compost heap ten thousand years old. Beneath this perfection of corruption lay a dark rich loam."90 Nighttime re-kindled early morning anxiety as instinctive fears of the unknown and darkness washed over the Marines. Leckie wrote that "[w]e were dispirited. We were cold. We were wet. We were ignorant of our surroundings, so we were afraid of them."91 The Japanese too were as scary as the local environment. "We knew nothing of our enemy, so we feared him. We were alone, surrounded by a jungle alive with the noise of moving things."92 In fact, a Navy medical study after the battle, conducted by two pharmacists, highlighted that "[m]any who had no anxiety in the daytime would develop a state of anxiety and nervous tension at night."93 The Army's official medical history noted the "profound jungle darkness" and that the "unnerving nights sounds of animals and birds" were two key factors in the creation of neuropsychiatric cases on Guadalcanal. Noises caused by nocturnal fauna (and the tension of not knowing where the Japanese were) kept the inexperienced Marines spooked. Robert Shedd described that since the overcast weather had cleared earlier on the morning of D-Day, the "first night ashore the moon was bright and this made some
88 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 13. 89 Leckie, 64. 90 Leckie, 73. Loam is rich soil containing clay, sand, and other matter. 91 Leckie, 62. 92 Leckie, 62. 93 McMillan, 118. 94 Mary Ellen Condon-Rail and Albert E. Cowdrey, United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services: The Medical Department: Medical Service in the War Against Japan (Washington: GPO, 1998), 125. Neuropsychiatric conditions were commonly known as "war neurosis" or "battle fatigue" in WWII. 73 weird shadows and helped cause lots of rifle firing." Schwacha explained that "every now and then, a rifle shot would pierce the stillness of the jungle. Some Marine thought he heard a Jap prowling about which turned out to be parrots or large lizards."96 Chillemi commented that when darkness approached everyone was ordered "to bed down and not move about."97 Since there were generally no fronts in the South Pacific, every unit had to secure itself 360 degrees all around. Accompanying this was the policy of no Marine movement at night. Chillemi "gladly did this, for I was dead tired. QO Bedding down meant sleeping on the ground with whatever cover we could find." The discomfort of the transports was now replaced with new adversities. Chillemi recalled that "I no sooner laid down when another heavy rain began to fall." He tried sleeping under a truck wrapped in his poncho, but it proved "impossible, even though the evening air was wet and cold. Wrapping yourself in a poncho eliminates air circulation and you begin to sweat. If you uncover, the chill, the rain, and the mosquitoes get to you. It was a no win situation that would repeat itself over and over again every day and night spent exposed to the jungle and the elements."99 Toleration became the main coping mechanism after attempts at increasing comfort failed. Exhaustion, not comfort, eventually forced sleep. Chillemi concluded that "I, like the others, just stayed wet, cold, miserable and mosquito bait after dusk and just stayed wet, hot, miserable and mosquito bait after sunrise."100 On the second day Anthony Chillemi remembered awaking to a morning that was "hot, wet, and the air was laden with the smell of acrid smoke and residue from the bursts of earlier shell fire."101 Despite the problems of sleep, the first few nights on Guadalcanal proved to be better than normal once Rabaul commenced sporadic aerial and naval bombardments at night. Sleep the second night was reportedly not too bad, except that now there was a great naval battle playing out just north of the beaches. Schwacha recorded that the "only hindrance we had that kept us from sleeping soundly was a very large sea-battle which was going on just off the beach, flashes of light, 95 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. 96 Schwacha, 25. 97 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 14. 8 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 14. 99 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 14-15. 100 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 15. 101 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 15. 74 lighting the sky with a dull red glow as ships were being hit by shells and burning." For those standing guard duty, the lack of Japanese soldiers meant that mosquitoes were the main threat. Either than that, "we had a nice peaceful, restful night."103 Among first impressions were also conceptions formulated about the Japanese. Guadalcanal, as the Division's baptism of fire, also introduced the men to the influence of race-war as a characteristic of the Pacific War. William Schwacha's contemporary notes described, and reflected, the first hatred-charged encounter with the Japanese. On Sunday, August 9, 1942, about one mile west of the beach area adjacent to Henderson Field, the Marines saw a small group of Japanese troops waving a white flag. Naturally, they interpreted it as a desire to surrender. Twenty- seven Marines boarded a small craft around midnight and approached the Japanese by water. Once they landed, and once the boat pulled away, the Japanese opened up with machine gun fire killing all but one Marine. The battle was supposedly fierce and lasted about twenty minutes. The sole survivor managed to run for the water and swim back to the Marines' lines, relating the horrific story upon return.104
Schwacha's rage was strong. He continued to record that "we are now standing by to go down there and pay our respects to our unfriendly, inhuman, yellow [enemy]."105 He recalled his Colonel "waving frantically, shouting orders for us to get going and give them Hell." Schwacha's boat ran out of fuel en route; apparently they took off so quickly that no one checked the fuel gage. Bitterness had to be suffered in silence. The next day, after sporadic fire-fights that resulted in the death of a small number of Japanese, the Marines returned to their lines still "sick at heart." Schwacha noted that "[a]fter that it is no honor, but I will admit we never took another prisoner nor showed them any mercy whatsoever, for bodies of the twenty-six who landed on the beach that morning, were found mutilated, torn to pieces with bayonets and swords, one had 14 wounds in him from some Japanese Officer's sword." Violence representative of a race-war was conducted by both sides, albeit the Japanese propensity for the mutilation
102 Schwacha, 28. 103 Schwacha, 28. 104 Schwacha, 31-32. For a recount of the Gottage Patrol, see either Frank's Guadalcanal or McMillan's The Old Breed. 105 Schwacha, 32. 106 Schwacha, 32. 107 Schwacha, 34. 75 of corpses and blatant torture was salient. Over sixty years later, Jack Cannal recalled the Goettge Patrol: Interviewer: "Did it [the Goettge Patrol] change the way you felt about the Japanese from then on?" Jack Cannal: "Yes, because we went down, to find the patrol. When we got there, I'll never forget, I saw a leg and a leg cut away from the body. They were all cut up in pieces. .. .the first time I saw men cut up like this."
The Land of Guadalcanal • When Richard Washburn, veteran of the 2n d Raider Battalion, told Henry Berry that the "Nips were bad enough but the living conditions could murder you,"109 he was not exaggerating about the environmental adversities on Guadalcanal. He continued by asserting that "[b]elieve me, that jungle could be an enemy in itself."110 It was the foreignness of the landscape and the depth of immersion into that very landscape, combined with the conduct of military operations and "operating far from modern support facilities,"111 that created the context for how the men experienced, and how veterans remembered, their time in the jungle. To sum up that experience, Washburn noted that "it was grueling as hell" and that "you can take just so much of that kind of living."112 Most of the fighting on Guadalcanal took place on the northern coastal plain, from three to ten miles wide at differing points. Guadalcanal is eighty miles long, from east to west, and thirty-four miles wide, from north to south in the center, with a total coverage of 2500 square miles.113 A mountain range, ranging in height from 5000 to 7500 feet, spans the axis of the island, running east to west and parallel to most of the
Jack Cannal, interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 4, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association 58th Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. The Goettge Patrol occurred on August 12. Richard Washburn in Berry, 125. When Richard Washburn returned to Espiritu Santo, he discovered that he had malaria and hepatitis. 110 Richard Washburn in Berry, 124. 111 Bergerud, 69. 112 Richard Washburn in Berry, 125. 113 Gordon L. Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide: A Geo-Military Study (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 105. Hereinafter Rottman, World War IIPacific Island Guide. 76 northern and southern coast. The rivers and streams that pour out of this range run north and south to the coasts. The 1st Marine Division did not travel south of the central mountain range, let alone up it; nor did they campaign in the extreme north-west or south-east protrusions of the island. Since their mission was the retention of the airstrip, the jungle they encountered was a relatively small area in the center of the northern coastal plain. This plain was where most of the local Melanesians lived, although they moved south when the war came and "were little affected by the intense fighting."115 The central mountain range had perpendicular ridges (with accompanying rivers) jutting out towards the north coast. Eric Bergerud claimed that these were "some of the most rugged mountain ranges and ridgelines on the globe."116 Veteran Ray Bauml remembered "[w]e climbed up on this hill; well, you couldn't walk up it, it was almost perpendicular. We'd tie the rope to a small tree, boost the guys - we got over. You can imagine the time involved." Since the majority of Marine movements were east and west along the northern coast (less than twenty miles deep), they continually had to traverse these ridges and ford the streams.118 This axis of movement was unavoidable because the Japanese landed east or west of the airstrip. A pre-occupation study by the intelligence section of the Division cited these ridge sides as "extremely steep and in many places precipitous, with rivers cutting deep gorges."119 Also, the jungle seemed to get particularly thick at the point where it met the rivers and streams. Marines spent days clearing fields of fire in this exceptionally thick foliage where a particular bank of a river or stream constituted part of the perimeter. These river gorges and even smaller streams typically overflowed during the rainy season and flooded their adjacent regions. It was these lagoons that offered mosquitoes excellent breeding grounds. Often US and Japanese small units held the
Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 105, and in "Guadalcanal: General Information" (no author, no date), 1, Folder 9, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter "Guadalcanal: General Information." 115 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 105 and "Guadalcanal: General Information," 1, which states a population of "14,000, mostly Melanesian stock" (105). 116 Bergerud, 59. 117 O'Donnell, 60. 118 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 105. 119 "Study of Guadalcanal," July 11, 1942, 1, File 5, Box 7, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter "Study of Guadalcanal." Note: the source was most likely written by the intelligence section of the Division. 77 ridge and hill tops for better fields of fire and because a lack of overhead foliage did not complicate mortar fire. However, the ridge tops held particular challenges, specifically no coverage from the blistering sun. In fact, "in a few instances personnel intolerant to sunlight were transferred to other organizations, especially was this true in the cases of those blond individuals with bright red hair."120 Not all of northern Guadalcanal was thick with foliage. The north was relatively less rugged than the southern coastal and central mountain regions. Coconut plantations (owned by Lever's Pacific Plantations Ltd.) stretching two miles inland at most, had no undergrowth, and several small grassy plains accompanied the jungle. Also, compared to New Britain, Guadalcanal held relatively few swamps and mangroves. In this sense, the 1st Marine Division fought in the most human-cultivated part of Guadalcanal. However, the southern portion, and most of the eastern and western sections, of the defensive perimeter did enter the jungle. Patrols attempting to contact the Japanese also had to enter the jungle. Strong amongst the veterans' collective memory was the perceived 1 77 impenetrability of the flora—trees and foliage, "this barrier Nature had built." Veteran of the 9th Defense Battalion David Slater noted a difference between seeing i y) and being on Guadalcanal. He stated that "Guadalcanal was lovely, from the sea, but the jungle bordering the rivers on the coastal plain were sometimes impenetrable and fetid."124 William Schwacha's recordings provided a description of the jungle as seen from a bare hill top. "I am writing this today on our hill top.. ..I can see dense jungle, undergrowth, bright green and slightly tinted with pale yellow. Over to my right lies a range of hills stretching for miles, patches of light green dot their sides, below the jungle lies, silent, mysterious." Schwacha detailed a march in the jungle.
Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase IV, "Annex B: Medical," 2, June 25, 1943, Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives and Records Association, "Archive II," College Park, MD. 121 "Study of Guadalcanal," 3. "The coconut plantations were the largest commercial enterprises in the South Pacific" (Bergerad, 59). 122 Schwacha, 90. 123 The 9th Defense Battalion landed on Guadalcanal on November 30, 1942 from The Ninth Marine Defense and AAA Battalions (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company, 1989). 94. 124 David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2006, 1. 125 Schwacha, 45. 78
I watch the boys as we march through the jungle, everyone of us tired and weary, but still alert, though ahead the trail winds in and out, sun streaming down, sweat pouring down, causing drops to roll from under your steel helmet, then off your chin. Some of the boys are quiet, others look up and smile, rifles swinging to and fro, shirt open in the front, cartridge belts loaded, with bayonets swinging down at the side, our feet are like lead, onward we march.126
The march had a quality of endlessness because the jungle itself seemed to have no delineations. For those unaccustomed to it, any one tract of jungle seem indistinct from the next. Schwacha later recorded that basic passage through the undergrowth was problematic. He noted that the jungle was this "huge mass of twisted trees, enormous trees, dangling vines. A little winding foot path works away through it, otherwise • 1 on passage would be almost impossible." Paths made by generations of Melanesian feet were certainly an asset to troop movement. Even where they existed, the movement of a unit larger than a company demanded more than a simple footpath. The conditions of a footpath rapidly deteriorated and after a few hundred men, problems with mud worsened. In the absence of a footpath, moving a few men was difficult. David Slater remarked that "I recall working for several hours to lay line [wire] through about 400 yards, my crew and I whacking away with machetes."128 The impenetrability of the jungle demanded that the men modify their conceptions of time and space. If at home it took a specific time to move a certain distance, then those internalized gauges all had to be changed in light of the thickness of brush and trees. Richard Washburn recalled an anecdote illustrating this challenge The colonel [Evans Carlson] had just pointed out how we would have to travel from one end of a very thick jungle to the other end: "But, gentlemen," he had said, "it's only twenty-two miles as the crow flies." "Yeah, colonel," came from the audience, "but we ain't crows."129 The tension between high-ranking officers and the reality on the ground continued for most of the campaign. Officers were constantly bewildered by how maps seemed to deceive them. Commanders were frustrated when they perceived that their subordinates were not moving quickly enough. The jungle as an excuse became a source of strain for
Schwacha, 66. Schwacha, 110. David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2006, 2. Richard Washburn in Berry, 123. 79 command and control issues. General Vandegrift, in explaining why the 7 Marines had taken relatively high casualties and encountered maneuvering and communication problems west of the airstrip, simply concluded that "we just underestimated the strength of the jungles."130 The problem with moving through the jungle was two-fold: tree density and the sheer thickness of the undergrowth. Despite how dense the trees were, the most pressing issue was the vegetation inherent to the jungle floor. William Schwacha recalled specific trouble with vines. "Vines in the heavy undergrowth cling to our clothes, needles prick into our arms and legs." Anthony Chillemi echoed this when he noted that it "took great effort not to become hopelessly entangled in trailing vines
1 ^9 and plant overgrowth." Richard Washburn recounted his ordeal with vines, commented that "you never hear anything about the liana vines. These nasty things, full of little fishhook barbs, lined the trails. They could actually entrap a man. Of course he could get free, even though he frequently needed help, but those vines would rip at his i ii body." Death by vines were virtually impossible, but there was a potential for serious consequences. Washburn continued that "[w]hen they would do a real vicious job on the guy, the chances of infection were high. We had men whose cuts from those darn things festered until he got off the island."134 Lacerations in the jungle were more serious than a cut back home. Lacerations invited infection. Also, those wounded and ill in the jungle found it more difficult to heal properly. As historian Harold A. Winters noted that "[tjropical conditions not only endanger the healthy soldier, they also make it difficult for the disabled to recover"135—although death was seldom. Anthony Chillemi recalled trekking through the jungle past the airstrip on D- plus 1. "I remember the march as unbearably hot. Our clammy clothing had become wet with a mixture of sweat and light rain."136 William Schwacha again recorded the
130 Alexander A. Vandegrift, USMC, Oral History Transcript, 1962, 706, Box 153, Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. The small area was known as the Grassy Knoll. 131 Schwacha, 69. 132 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 39. 133 Richard Washburn in Berry, 124-125. Liana refers to climbing plants in the tropics. 134 Richard Washburn in Berry, 125. 135 Harold A. Winters with Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., William J. Reynolds, and David W. Rhyne, Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 232. 136 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 16. 80 problems of moving through the jungle, perceiving nature as an impediment to human actions, hi late October "[a]s we advanced towards their [the Japanese] stronghold, jungle foliage, vines, banyan trees, ferns that grew overhead, we cut our way through this barrier Nature had built. ...The heat was terrific, no breeze, only a canteen of water." He continued by detailing another jungle march: The next morning we head back down into the jungle, down on grass covered .. .creeping, falling, a foot-hold was hard to find, crossed .. .cool water filled our canteens and advanced. For about an hour we were lost could not contact the other companies, walking, on the alert, ahead lies the last village, our trail was only a foot wide, giant trees grew along the sides, vines dangling from their lofty limbs.138
Both William Hawkins and Warner Pyle described the density of the jungle. Remembering August 7, Hawkins recounted that "we got word to go into the jungle at an angle. For the next two or three hours we moved into that swill. It was just a putrefying nightmare. And did it stink! You could hardly see more than a few feet in front of you in broad daylight."139 Here Hawkins noted that impenetrability was experienced visually as much as physically. Warner Pyne sketched that the jungle "was surely deceptive looking. Hell, it would put you in mind of some kind of a tropical dream, at least where we were to land. .. .From our vantage point we couldn't see what a putrefying shithole it really was."140 The Marines utilized "foxholes" in which to create 'the front.' This was done through an excavation in the soft ground called a "foxhole." Foxholes were small cavities dug with light shovels and typically meant for two Marines. Conceptually, the foxhole was the sharp end of the war, as the physical area in front of the foxhole was not technically occupied by the Marines.141 Where possible, this frontal area was cleared of vegetation to create fields of fire along assumed avenues of enemy approach. Several foxholes, about a dozen feet from each other, created the firing line and or perimeter, which tended to follow delineations in the terrain. Specialized units like the
137 Schwacha, 90. 138 Schwacha, 90. 139 William Hawkins in Berry, 46. 140 Warner Pyne in Berry, 65. 141 The "sharp end" of war, meaning the front, was derived from John Ellis, "Reflections on the 'Sharp End of War," Paul Addison and Angus Calder, eds, Time To Kill: The Soldier's Experience of War in the West, 1939-1945 (London: Pimlico, 1997). 81 weapons company, mortars and artillery, and the command post were set up behind the line. Foxholes offered sufficient protection from airborne ordnance, unless a shell landed in the foxhole (a topic of much conversion). Foxholes, like a trench, were efficient for small arms and machine gun fire as only a small portion of the Marine's body was visible. Despite their tactical advantages, though, foxholes forced the men to suffer all the disadvantages of living in a depression in the ground. Harold Winters, referring to foxholes, claimed that "[c]areful selection of battle positions becomes critical. Poorly placed foxholes and bunkers can become cesspools that may jeopardize, rather than protect, their occupants."142 That the construction of a foxhole was almost always the first activity done in a new area indicated how important it was. The creation of a front gave the unit conceptual and physical perimeters to work within, and was typically chosen because of terrain features. Charles Frankel remarked that "as soon as we reached an area where we would stay, we always dug a foxhole. We slept on our ponchos and we kept our clothes on."143 Robert Shedd understood that the "green" Marines at first did not appreciate the value of the foxhole as "our first foxholes weren't very deep, but we soon learned to dig them deeper."144 William Schwacha remembered huddling in a foxhole during a naval bombardment. "A ship in the bay was throwing the shell, after around an hour it stopped. I awoke the next morning cramped and damp with dew. Ants had used my arms and legs for a runway, oh well, I can shake off ants a lot easier than shrapnel."1 5 On Guadalcanal, since Japanese bombardment was sporadic, the men could sleep where they wanted: on the ground, in bunkers, in makeshift huts, and so on, and only have to use foxholes during attacks. Robert Shedd recalled that "although we didn't sleep in them, we often had to get in them at night as well as in the day time and if it was raining, we got wet and muddy."146 The problems of the jungle left the men with a negative impression. Richard Washburn noted that the combination of "heat, sweat, mosquitoes, rain, stink" made the
Winters, 232. Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 9. Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. Schwacha, 82. Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. 82 jungle "repulsive." Jack Cannal implied that the Japanese were inherently part of the jungle when he noted that the jungle was "where the Japanese could be found."148 That Japanese attacks screamed out of the undergrowth helped to implant concepts like this, despite that mainland Japan had a moderate climate with no rainforests.149 William Schwacha recorded that the "jungle is to me a place where mystery prevails."150 That the jungle-a tract of land with accompanying vegetation-was expressed as an entity of its own reflected its prevalence for the Marines on Guadalcanal. At first what seemed novel and new, and even beautiful, soon became an agent of mystery, enervation, and danger. The jungle housed the unknown. Fauna shrieked from its recesses, flora sliced at the body, and the Japanese came boiling out it, making the jungle a danger not just in itself, but also a perceived sanctuary for the enemy.
The Weather of Guadalcanal ~ Eric Bergerud wrote of the South Pacific that the "weather created a battlefield loathed by infantrymen."151 Although New Britain proved to be the rainiest place that the 1st Marine Division campaigned on, Guadalcanal was rainy enough. Consequently, the veterans often mentioned rainfall in the memories of Guadalcanal. The average yearly rainfall for Henderson Field is 82.4 inches.152 For comparison, New Orleans international airport experiences a yearly average of 62.2 inches.153 A contemporary report noted that the island can receive "approximately 120 inches" yearly—and this was considered an "abundant" amount of rainfall to Americans.154 Gordon Rottman, working mainly from contemporary sources, noted that the entire chain can get up to
Richard Washburn in Berry, 123. 148 Jack Cannal, interview with the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 4, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association 58 Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. 49 Okinawa, as the rest of the Ryukyu Islands, are considered semi-tropical. Kyushu is not. 150 Schwacha, 110. 151 Bergerud, 62. 152 "Average Rainfall," Honiara/Henderson, Solomon Islands, World Climate, 2008,
200 inches of rainfall per year.155 Modern sources note that the Solomon Islands receive from 118 to 196 inches of rainfall per year at various seaside weather stations.156 When the sun is south of the equator, rainfall is particularly intense, especially for November and December.157 A breakdown of rainfall figures on a monthly basis demonstrates that the Division, in terms of precipitation, was quite fortunate on Guadalcanal. August stands at a monthly average of 3.8 inches while September stays similar at 3.9 inches. October jumps to 5.1 inches and November rises again to 6.1 inches. The Division left Guadalcanal in December, which experiences 8.7 inches on average.158 Also, the northern coastal plains that the Division campaigned on, near the Tenaru and Ilu Rivers for instance, are relatively dry compared to other parts of the island.159 This can be attributed to the central mountain range, which "effectively intercepts the southeast trade winds, so that a rather regular dry season is experienced in the coastal lowland on the northern side of the island."160 For those fighting and garrisoning on Tulagi, the rain was more intense. Tulagi receives an average of 122.6 inches of rainfall a year. The 1st Marine Division witnessed a season change on Guadalcanal. From D- Day up until the end of October they were subject to the more moderate southwest trade winds, which brought in temperatures from the low 70s to high 80s. Around the beginning of November the northwest monsoon season ushered in higher temperatures, more rain, and more humidity. Being in the southern hemisphere was generally disorienting; a hot December was odd for the men and the constellations were different. Rottman noted that during this period the temperatures can reach 93°F. However, extremes within Guadalcanal's weather patterns are small, as the Solomon Islands "are in the extremely humid and warm oceanic equatorial tropics, where no significance variations in seasonality are expected."161 Today, Henderson Airport experiences fairly
Rottman, Pacific Island Guide, 98. 156 Dieter Mueller-Dombois and F. Raymond Fosberg, Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands (New York, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 1998), 66. 157 Mueller-Dombois and Fosberg, 66. 158 "Average Rainfall," Honiara/Henderson, Solomon Islands, World Climate, 2008,
162 "Average Maximum Temperature," Honiara (Henderson Airport M. O.), World Climate, 2008,
The veterans consistently recall the influence of rain during the Guadalcanal campaign. Robert Shedd recalled that part of the problem with the rain was not that the Division was not ready for it initially, but that too much equipment was left behind in Wellington. He noted that "because of the shortage of shipping space as we left New Zealand, we were not allowed to bring tentage. This even included our little shelter halves. If it rained, the best we had for shelter was our ponchos. And it rained on Guadalcanal." Ralph Evans remembered how his poncho was central to his coping with rain. "Tropical rains were a problem in the late fall months. They temporarily flooded foxholes and softened dirt roads and trails. It was not unusually to rain 171 constantly for 3 or 4 days. Our ponchos (rain coats) were certainly our friends." William Schwacha remembered rain-filled foxholes, recording that it "rained all night, my hole has about 8" of water in it. I had to sleep, I lay on a board, shells were bursting only a few yards away, I dosed off amid the crashes."172 In addition, the misery of sleeping in these conditions was increased by having to awake to them. "It was before 1 7^ dawn when I awoke, wet through, clay clinging to my helmet and shoes." Schwacha concluded this "isn't a very pleasant feeling."174 William Schwacha held that their personal belongings, as well as their body, become utterly soaked. "What a miserable night we spent last night, rain coming down in torrents soaked us to the skin. Our packs were supposed to be water-proof but they didn't shed the water. All our belongings inside them were all so wet."1,J This was distressing, since items like letters from home were held in high regard; commanders also considered letters as a key to good morale. When the rain soaked a letter, or the humidity destroyed paper fibers, these last pieces of connection to home were also under assault from the elements. In response the men set out to obtain small pieces of both malleable or hard plastic. Waterproof items became highly valued in order to protect cigarettes and matches in particular. Cigarettes were included with k-rations and
Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. 1 Ralph Evans, letter to author, May 2, 2005, 2. 2 Schwacha, 89. 3 Schwacha, 89. 4 Schwacha, 95. 5 Schwacha, 31. 86 took on a role of stress reliever. Caffeine, and to a lesser extent aspirin, were the other consistently accessible drugs. Alcohol was rarely available on campaigns islands. David Slater wrote "[c]igarettes were a must. Some guys, really hooked, would trade off things to get extra cans of 'Chelsea' cigarettes that came 50 to a 'Planter's Peanut' tin. These could then be neatly fitted into our standard 'horse show pack' in
1 Hf\ place of shoes, shelter half etc." Ralph Evans noted that "most Marines smoked 177 cigarettes. Even our daily issue of K-rations contained a package of four cigarettes." Charles Frankel recalled that "I was a smoker and smoked about two packs a day. Cigarettes were plentiful at about $0.06 per pack."178 Anthony Chillemi wrote that for "those of us who smoked, food wasn't the only shortage. After the first few weeks on the Island, our own cigarettes were gone and we were forced to smoke cigarettes captured from the Japanese." However, unlike sake, Japanese cigarettes were deemed inferior. To say Japanese cigarettes were lousy would be a gross understatement. Each pack of cigarettes came with little conical paper holders to place the cigarettes in while smoking. It was easy to understand the need to use the holders. Otherwise your mouth became fouled. ...except for the generation of smoke and it's desired effect, the taste and aroma was literally out of a dirty stable.179 Chillemi continued by noting that the intense displeasure noted towards Japanese cigarettes had the health benefit of stunting his smoking, if only temporarily.180 As a prized and plentiful item, cigarettes replaced money when it was scarce or cigarettes were prioritized by the individual. Cigarettes allowed gambling to be conducted—the main source of entertainment in an environment largely devoid of leisure. Simultaneously, though, Marines who smoked more than four cigarettes a day considered the early phases of Guadalcanal as a time of cigarette-shortage. So, cigarettes were both plentiful and scarce, being supplied regularly but in numbers not satisfactory to all. Chillemi wrote that "[b]ecause of the cigarette shortage, cigarettes became a medium of exchange, and were especially important as a substitute for money
David Slater, letter to author, May, 2006, 6. Ralph Evans, letter to author, May 2, 2005, 8. Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 10. Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 25. Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 25. 87 whenever there was time to play poker or blackjack. Winning or losing cigarettes at poker or blackjack was serious business."181 William Schwacha recalled when the seasons changed, noting that the rainy season ushered in a sense of instability as the rains seemed to come at random moments. "The rainy season is now here, one minute the sun shines, and the next minute a downpour, mud and puddles lie all over, you can hear the rain coming as it falls on the palm leaves, quite a distance away."182 By early November the rainy season was in full swing. Schwacha recorded "[w]e are now experiencing a tropical rain storm, sheets of cool rain are falling all over, the jungle is dripping water, it is running off the huge leaves in little streams of water. The earth is soggy under foot, no insects around now, just the steady beat of the rain. One cannot escape its damp touch, not a dry spot around."183 Schwacha lamented that as "I look out over the hills it is misty with rain, where and how will I sleep tonight, I don't know. It's cold here in the morning around 4
1 R Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 26. 2 Schwacha, 47. 3 Schwacha, 100. 4 Schwacha, 100. 5 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 21. 6 Bob Stiles in Berry, 83-84. 7 Dean Winters in O'Donnell, 59. 88 course. When didn't it rain in the hills?"188 David Slater noted the intensity of the rain, 1 RQ recalling that "[r]ain, when it came down, was truly drenching at times." Robert Leckie recorded that the sheer amount and intensity of rainfall brought the Marines to insanity's edge. He wrote that there "were whole days of downpour when I lay drenched and shivering, gazing blankly out of my hole, watching as the sheeted gray rain whipped and undulated over the Ridge. At such times, a man's brain seems to cease to function. It seems to retreat into a depth."190 For people raised in the continental US, local environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, and rainfall in the South Pacific caused considerable physical and mental misery. Guadalcanal's normal weather patterns were abnormal for US Marines, even if they were raised in America's harsher climates, like Louisiana or Arizona. In fact, for virtually every combatant and participant, the "war in the South Pacific was a struggle between outsiders." l Neither Americans nor Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders, and other Europeans, were typically local. What made rainfall such a factor in creating misery was that it occurred so often against those not in a position to combat it or accustomed to it. Americans at home at least had shelter, even if they lived in a rainy region. The "Unfitting" of the Is Marine Division ~ The 1st Marine Division was unable to finish the campaign on Guadalcanal, despite its vital defense of the airstrip. Within sixteen weeks the Division was deemed "unfit" for active duty. Several interrelating and complex factors had contributed to this, chief amongst which was malaria. Also included was a sometimes poor diet, a general lack of supplies, episodic shelling from Japanese naval and aerial forces, sporadic but intense combat, a lack of rest, formidable diseases, fatigue, trauma, the rugged terrain, and wet, hot weather. For a battle like Peleliu, veteran memories are strongly focused on the first few days. The middle and end of that battle tends to blur. Guadalcanal was different. D-Day is well remembered, and the end of the grind was 8 Ray Bauml in O'Donnell, 60. 9 David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2006, 1. 0 Leckie, 124. 'Bergerud, 118. 89 also not forgotten. Self-descriptions like "zombies" and "scarecrows" speak to the men's physical condition and encapsulate a sort of 'last impressions.' By November 1942, William Schwacha started to add statements to his daily diary revolving around the deteriorating conditions of the Marines' minds and bodies. For example, he recorded that the "men here are dirty, tired, need shaves, clothes that 1 Q9 are torn, shoes worn thin, in general we are all run down, in body and also in spirit." Weeks of intermittent combat and continual challenges from the local environment had enfeebled the men, although many were still functional. Compounding problems kept adding up, particularly the relentless malaria but also non-quantifiable factors like a sense of lost energy, monotony, and even a sense of the loss of calculable time. Lethargy and enervation—a lack of verve—had seemingly overcome the Division. Officially the "unfitting" of the 1st Marine Division (a term used here to signify when medical personnel finally declared the Division unfit for combat duty) came in early December when, conveniently, the Americal Division and the 2nd Marine Division were able to relieve the 1st Marine Division. The medical annex of the Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V reported a small study conducted by the medical officers of one regiment (as a specimen group) just forty-eight hours before departure. The goal was to determine the proportion of incapacitated Marines for December 7 and 8, 1942, just days before parts of the Division were to withdraw. The medical officers interviewed each enlisted man, separately, in the entire regiment. They concluded that 34% of the unit was now "unfit for any duty which might involve combat activity."194 If that number was not impressive enough, they added the caveat that the inclusion of 400 recent replacements skewed the statistic.195 A Marine regiment in 1942 stood at 3000 men. 34% of that is 1025 Marines. But without the fresh replacements, 1025 "unfit" Marines within a depleted regiment of 2600 men translates into a daunting 39%. 192 Schwacha, 100. ,93 Richard Frank noted that this regiment was "very likely the 5th Marines" (522) but did not offer an explanation. His estimate stands-to-reason though as the 5th Marines were first to leave. 194 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 10. 195 Frank O. Hough, Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Volume I, (FMFRP 12-34, Doctrine Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, VA: 2000 [1958]), 359. 90 So, by the end of the first week of December, for at least the 1st and 5n Marines, about four out of ten men had been so battered by the environment (malaria in particular), living conditions, and combat that they were deemed temporarily unfit for combat duties.196 Robert Shedd recalled the unfitting of his Division. For him it made complete sense, that with "all the patrolling and battles, with the Japs shelling or bombing us night and day, the poor food, sickness and living conditions, by late November, the medical people declared the division unfit for further offensive action." However, malaria was only one of several factors that contributed to need for relief. Robert Leckie remembered that a collective "depression" had afflicted the men by November. He noted that they "were growing irritable. Our strength was being steadily sapped, and a sort of physical depression afflicted many of us. Often a man expended his whole strength going to chow, working his way down the slippery hill to 1 OR the galley tent set up in a ravine, and then climbing back up it." For William Schwacha, the seemingly endless war created a spirit of forlorn stoicism. Schwacha recorded that "[n]o longer have we clean clothes or shoes that are not worn out. Our dungarees are faded by the sun, torn in places by the brush, shoes cut by coral, no stockings, long since discarded. We are tired, tired of battle, very little food, lack of clean cool water, tired and hungry, we sleep where we stop, be it on grass, sand, or Japanese mats. It doesn't matter, anywhere."199 That sleepy men laid anywhere was a sign to Schwacha that the physical culture with which these men had been raised was slipping away. "I wonder how a meal would taste, or a night's sleep in a bed would feel. Its funny in a way how a fellow can think like this, here on a war torn island."200 Perhaps not knowing when they would re-enter civilization encouraged this stoicism. Regardless, the 1st Marine Division had been too long immersed in environmental conditions that were as conceptually far from their home as possible. Schwacha continued by noting "[w]e live like animals, not men who There was no set duration for "refitting." The 1st Marine Division did not see action again for fifty-five weeks. For comparison, the break between New Britain and Peleliu was just twenty-one weeks. 197 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 2. 198 Leckie, 123. 199 Schwacha, 107. 200 Schwacha, 58. 91 came from homes where food and rest could be had. ...Someday we again may enjoy the simple things that make a happy life."201 One way in which the Marines gauged a turn in strategy was when the Army arrived. Robert Leckie remembered the first appearance of the Army. "The fate of Wake Island no longer haunted us. Our Navy was back. The worst that could happen to us now was a Dunkirk. So we were glad to see the soldiers when they came trudging up to our pits."202 Interestingly, he commented on their physical appearance, noting that "[fjheir faces were still heavy with flesh, their ribs padded, their eyes innocent."203 hi late October Schwacha bitterly wrote "we expect the Army in any day now. You see we have this Island safe for the drafters to walk on, all we need to do now, is to make it like home for them, to build a USO or canteen with coco cola and ice cream."204 Schwacha's mood had deteriorated, a reflection of the period. His anger towards the Army illustrated several elucidations. A definition of toughness included a close proximity to Nature. Volunteering was an important source of pride. Disdain for the 'rear' was present. Luxury items were juxtaposed against the primordial context. Both soda and ice cream make brief but numerous and significant appearances in the collective memory, icons in opposition to the elements. Anthony Chillemi commented on this enervation by highlighting the feeling of monotony on Guadalcanal. "Each day was like the last. We worked, we stayed wet from sweat, we stank, we became ill, we tended the ill, injured and wounded, we became hungrier to the point of losing appetite, and we began to show signs of mental and physical exhaustion from daily assaults by the elements and the Japanese."205 Warner Pyne noted three factors that contributed to the unfitting, stating that "[w]e'd been there for four months and we were beat. That constant strain of combat, the lousy diet and, above all, the goddamn malaria had turned us into scarecrows. We were a mess."206 Here Pyne's reflection on Guadalcanal demonstrated that "above all" it was the "goddamn malaria" that unfit the Division. He continued that "[w]e'd had four 201 Schwacha, 107. 202 Leckie, 109. 203 Leckie, 109. 204 Schwacha, 91. 205 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 29. 06 Warner Pyne in Berry, 68. 92 months of the worst kind of living you could imagine and we were used up. You've never seen a happier bunch of Raggedy Ass Marines than the 1st Division when they told us we were being sent to Australia."207 Despite how little a Marine might have known about Australia, they knew that as a European colony it held familiar aspects of civilization that they yearned for, in direct opposition to the jungle. Veteran Thomas Barry concurred that combat with the Japanese was not the only enemy of the Marines. He noted that "[w]e'd taken plenty of battle casualties, but the real problem was health, both physical and mental, of the troops. The division had really had it by December '42. God almighty, were the men beat! Half of them looked like walking zombies." Veteran Clifford Fox noted "that we were a mess by December. Dysentery, malaria, you name it all took its toll. ...There were Marines that couldn't make it up the rope ladders. Swabbies would climb down the cargo nets and help them up they were so weak."209 Robert Leckie illustrated just how physically drained he was by departure time. He recounted that "[w]e were so weak that many of us could not make the climb. Some fell into the waters-pack, rifle and all-and had to be fished out. Others clung desperately to the nets, panting, fearful to move lest the last ounce of strength depart them too, and the sea receive them."210 Men who had raced ashore months ago were now barely able to climb. The island that had done this to them earned their dislike. Schwacha could not hide his feelings about Guadalcanal—an island he dubbed "Hell." "I stand on deck, it was warm, a soft breeze was whispering, we were standing by to leave the Island at last, after one hundred and twenty-three days of living in say Hell."211 Indeed, "Hell" was an accusation often applied to combat islands, but for now the 1st Marine Division had experienced their first hell. They had come through their baptism of fire as victors over apparently unstoppable Japanese. But the Division now knew that victory had to be attained over a previously unperceived enemy—the very landscape on which they fought. 7 Bob Stiles in Berry, 85. 8 Thomas Barry in Berry, 101. 9 Clifford Fox in Bergerud, 100. 0 Leckie, 144-145. 1 Schwacha, 124. 93 Chapter Four Enter Plasmodium falciparum: Malaria on Guadalcanal Malaria was the most important biotic interaction the Marines had in the entire war. So enervating was the mosquito-transmitted parasite that its official numbers on the sick list nearly tripled battle casualties on Guadalcanal. In fact, for all US ground forces, as asserted by the Army's official medical history, it was "the most important and militarily significant disease in the Pacific."1 The Navy's unpublished medical history of the global conflict stated that malaria was "the worst of the [medical] offenders."2 Historian Albert Cowdrey wrote that a "good case can be made that malaria was the disease faced by American forces in World War II."3 For comparison, while malaria was conservatively recorded at 5749 cases, gunshot wounds resulted in 1472 cases.4 Out of a total of 10,635 men on the sick list, malaria by itself accounted for 54% of all admissions and 67% of all recorded diseases. True, malaria killed only three Marines on Guadalcanal while combat killed 650 men and corpsmen of the 1st Marine Division.5 The American drive to save lives helped to keep disease rates low, compared to the Japanese, but malaria still created "ineffective" Marines several times more than Japanese firepower. As George McMillan had noted for campaign's end, "[mjalaria had done what the Japanese had failed to do."6 1 Mary Ellen Condon-Rail and Albert E. Cowdrey, United States Army in World War II; The Technical Services: The Medical Department: Medical Service in the War Against Japan (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1998), 46. "Chapter III: The Solomons: Section 1, Guadalcanal," History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, (Washington: 1946), 15, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, Washington. Hereinafter History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished. Albert E. Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 177. Italics in original. Figures derived from Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, Annex X: Numerical Summary of Casualties in units of First Marine Division (reinforced), 3-4, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Contemporary and modified figures presented in Appendices A and B. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex X: Summary: Killed in Action or Died as a Result of Wounds, First Marine Division (Reinforced) 7 August to 10 December, 1942," 1-2, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. This document, although part of "Annex X: Casualties," is separated by its own pagination. 6 George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), 134. 94 The Japanese did not achieve half of what malaria had accomplished in terms of incapacitation—the temporary inability of a Marine to perform his essential duties (General Vandegrift referred to these as "ineffectives"). Even when all Marine totals (the 2nd Marines, 10th Marines, Defense Battalions, Raiders, and so on) on Guadalcanal are taken into account, from August 7 to February 8, 1943, and including Navy corpsmen, the figure 4176 (KIA, WIA, MIA, DOW) still does not surpass malaria's total for the 1st Marine Division and up to December 10, 1942.7 It is true that "many" of the malaria cases were "recurrent or relapsed cases,"8 but if this caveat would suggest lower numbers, two other factors suggest far higher numbers. First, for reasons unknown, the records became incomplete starting the fourth week of November, but it was known that "the number of admissions continued to increase throughout that period [fourth week of November to December 10]."9 It can be safely stated that the fourth week of November and the first and partial second week of December yielded far greater numbers than recorded. A conservative estimate of 850 cases per week for the last three weeks yields a grand total closer to 7000 cases. Second, the definition of sick shifted compared to a civilian context. For a Marine to be admitted onto the sick list he required an internal body temperature of 103°F.10 Suffering from malaria at 102F or lower was not grounds for entry. It is true that higher temperature fevers tend to correlate to increased danger—brain damage typically occurring at 107°F. However, generally, the possibility of death drastically increases once an individual's temperature reaches 100°F. A Marine with malaria resulting in a fever of 102°F was undoubtedly a sick person, but he was still expected to function. 7 Frank O. Hough, Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Volume I (FMFRP 12-34, Doctrine Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, VA: 2000 [1958]), Appendix D, "Marine Casualties," 395. Hereinafter Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal. KIA means killed-in-action, WIA means wounded-in-action, MIA means missing-in-action, and DOW means died-of-wounds. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 6, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. The official history concurs with this stating that "Records make it impossible to separate these two totals [malaria versus battle casualty figures]. Many men with malaria were hospitalized more than once and added to the total as cases rather than as individuals. Some of these later were killed or wounded in action" (Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 359). Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 6. Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 359. 95 Malaria and the Mosquito ~ The word malaria comes from mal aria in Italian and translates as "bad air." Before scientists at the very end of the 19th Century came to understand germs, people believed that bad air was the root cause of malaria. They interpolated that swamps were related to malaria, but did not understand the actuality of what was happening. Instead, malaria's casual organisms are apicomplexan protozoa of the genus Plasmodium, a particularly strong and dangerous type of unicellular parasite.11 Scientist describe Plasmodium as "extremely evasive."12 Others imply terms of awe: "amazed and fascinated by the biology, ecology, evasive strategies and adaptive evolution of an extraordinary parasite."13 A disease of the ages, descriptions of malaria can be found by Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, and even surmised to earlier peoples in Assyria, China, and India.14 Today, malaria is no less notable. Despite modern medical advancements, malaria's global mortality rate stands at over two million people per year, out of an estimated 400-500 million malaria cases.15 Medical entomologists worry as mosquitoes become more resistant to pesticides and as species of Plasmodium adapt to our drugs.16 Others lament that "development of the much-needed malaria vaccine seems as distant as ever."17 Some scholars will even claim that malaria is at the root of economic poverty, from the New South of 1900 to today's Third World nations.18 A parasite is defined as something that lives at the expense of a host. Protozoa are single cell organisms. Apicomplexa is a grouping of parasitic protozoa that are defined by a specific body part, the use of mammals as part of their lifecycle, and the creation of spores (for self-reproduction). 12 Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reece, et al, Biology, Sixth Edition, (San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 2002), 557. 3 David A. Warrell and Herbert M. Giles, eds, Essential Malariology, Fourth Edition (London: Arnold, 2002), vii-viii. Hereinafter Essential Malariology. 14 Essential Malariology, "Historical Outline," 1. 15 Essential Malariology, vii. 6 Jerome Goddard, Physician's Guide to Arthropods of Medical Importance, Third Edition (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000), 240. 17 Goddard, Preface. 18 Essential Malariology, "The epidemiology of malaria" 86. Deriving information from the work of J.L. Gallup and J.D. Sachs in a 1998 paper delivered to the World's Bank annual bank conference, Essential Malariology claimed that "the persistence of endemic malaria in the tropics and subtropics significantly contributes to a perpetual state of depressed economic growth." James R. Young's published dissertation, Malaria in the South, 1900-1930 (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1972), attributed the "retarded social and economic development of the South" from 1900 to 1930 as derived in part from malaria (abstract). For example, Young noted that "[fjear that knowledge of malaria would restrict capital investment or prevent the location of industry was a very real one" (50) and that "it was malaria that presented the greatest challenge to health officials, and, in many ways, to proponents of the New South. Health officials were inundated by the enormous number of malaria 96 There are four specific species of Plasmodium (P.) that afflict humans with malaria: P. vivax, P. malariae, P. ovale, and P. falciparum. The last, P. falciparum, is the most deadly overall.19 Just consider the vernacular used on P. falciparum— "malignant malaria," "pernicious malaria," and "tropical malaria."20 Although it is not limited to the South Pacific, P. falciparum was the dominant resident of the region and the specific parasite that the 1st Marine Division had the misfortune of meeting. However, malaria is an arthropodic pathogen and requires "transportation" to its host. Found in reptiles, birds, and mammals, the hundreds of species of Plasmodium are largely transmitted by female mosquitoes.22 The men's bout with malaria was synonymous with mosquito interactions. There are over 3200 species of mosquitoes world-wide, divided taxonomically into forty-two genera; however, only the genus Anopheles {A.) is responsible for transmitting malaria to humans. Within the Anopheles family of 430 species, about seventy are malaria vectors—they transport, but do not suffer the disease.24 Anopheles are successful creatures, with global distribution as proof. In the Pacific they are concentrated in the south, although absent east of Vanuatu (at 170°E) and not found at altitudes over one-and-half miles.25 There are three species of Australasian anophelines that stalk the Melanesians of Guadalcanal and New Britain. A. farauti, with the largest range, covers the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, Moluccas, and stretching from New Hebrides to northern Australia. They lay their larvae in semi-permanent waters that have been longer established, hoof-prints, and human containers like wells and pots. They seem to have victims each year, and spokesmen of the New South, faced with an enervating ubiquitous disease like malaria, were undercut in their efforts to diversify the economy" (30-31). 19 K. Salfelder with T. R. de Liscano and E. Sauerteig, Atlas of Parasitic Pathology, Volume Twenty (Accord Station, Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), 8 and 79. Atlas of Parasitic Pathology, 80. 21 Haiti (1915) and Dominican Republic (1916) had P. falciparum. Vector refers to the insect while vector-borne means an indirect transmission (the mosquito is biting to feed, not to infect) with a pathogen (something harmful, like P. falciparum) (Goddard, Preface). 23 Anopheles is from Greek, translated as "without use" but meaning "harmful." Anopheline(s) is the plural. 24 Atlas of Parasitic Pathology, 81. 25 Essential Malariology, "The Anopheles vector," 59. Mosquitoes are absent from the central highlands in New Guinea for this reason (Goddard, Figure 1, 243). 26 Essential Malariology, "Appendix: Characteristics of some major Anopheles vectors of human malaria," 332, and R.C. Muirhead-Thomson, Mosquito Behaviour in Relation to Malaria Transmission and Control in the Tropics (London: Edward Arnold & CO, 1951), 147. 97 no preference for where to target their victim but do prefer to rest outside. A. koliensis, found specifically in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, place their larvae in marshy pools and the lagoons that overflow from streams. They seem more diverse in preference to where they eat and rest.28 A. punctulatus, found in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Moluccas, specifically favor human blood over animals', in comparison to A. farauti and A. koliensis. They lay their eggs in swamps, lagoons, hoof-prints, at the edges of streams, and in temporary pools. They also prefer to rest indoors after "blood meals" and of these three species seem most comfortable with humans and human structures. These species were the malaria vector that the Allied and Japanese armed forces had to contend with in the Pacific, from the New Hebrides to the Netherlands Indies. Adult female anophelines need blood for both egg production and personal feeding (they also ingest plant nectar for sustenance). They prefer warm-blooded animals, favoring mammals specifically. Mosquitoes locate humans by a variety of means, typically through our "exhaled carbon dioxide, lactic acid, other host odours, warmth and moisture." Female anophelines target their victims within a range of typically twenty-three to sixty-five feet, depending on meteorological and geographical conditions. After bloating herself with about two milligrams of blood, about a one- minute process, the mosquito needs to rest in order to digest and to start the egg production process. She would have previously accepted a male's spermatozoa for fertilization as a blood meal almost always leads to egg production. The female mosquito lives for about ten to fourteen days while her eggs take two to three days to hatch. Once hatched, mosquitoes try to mate immediately. The life cycle of Plasmodium is a complex biological process that requires both mosquitoes and humans; anophelines being the definitive host (where the sexual phase of Plasmodium's reproduction occurs) while humans are the intermediate host {Plasmodium's asexual reproduction). After undergoing several cellular processes in an 27 Essential Malariology, "Appendix: Characteristics of some major Anopheles vectors of human malaria," 332. 28 Essential Malariology, "Appendix: Characteristics of some major Anopheles vectors of human malaria," 332. 29 Essential Malariology, "Appendix: Characteristics of some major Anopheles vectors of human malaria," 332, and Muirhead-Thomson, 147. 30 Essential Malariology, "The Anopheles vector," 66. 98 oocyst (pouch) in the lining of the mosquito's gut, infected sporozoites eventually migrate to the host's salivary glands.31 The sporozoites spend about ten days in the mosquito's gastric wall and salivary glands.32 When the female Anopheles inserts her proboscis into a human's capillary vessel, saliva freely runs through a central duct into the human's blood stream. Basically, this is an evolutionary tactic to stop animal blood from clotting. The raising and discoloration of human skin around a mosquito's incision is a chemical reaction to the mosquito's saliva and is unrelated to malaria. Once in a human's blood stream, the sporozoites typically reach the liver in about half an hour.33 Having made it to liver cells the sporozoites undergo a physical transformation and become merozoites ('daughter cells') that allows for the assault on the animal host's red blood cells. This process takes about eight days from the moment of being bitten (hence the lack of sick list reports for malaria in the first week of battle). The newly transformed merozoites rapidly multiply and then lice (burst) out of the red blood cells. They then continue to infect other cells. It is this action of merozoites bursting out of red blood cells every forty-eight to seventy-two hours that causes the infected person to feel the episodic symptoms of malaria—temperature fluctuations, aches, and pains. This is known as the acute phase of a malaria attack and is Plasmodium's multiple asexual reproductions of itself. Humans typically experience this about twelve to fifteen days after being bitten. Some merozoites then go on to finish their lifecycle in a new adult mosquito that bites the malaria-infected person. This Anopheles now has the Plasmodium parasite, having contracted malaria from a human, and the cycle repeats. This spreading of malaria from human to mosquito had serious potential in the Pacific War, the largest movement of humans across the relatively isolated South Pacific and entire Pacific Ocean region in history. In situations where the local population of mosquitoes have no malaria, like during a dry season in a nonetheless malarial area, an infected human can transmit the disease to a mosquito. For example, this was a serious threat in Queensland when recuperating Australian and American troops, infected with malaria, entered the region en masse. In May 1942, in the cities of 31 Campbell, Reece, et al, Biology, Figure 28.13, 557. Atlas of Parasitic Pathology, 80. 33 Please see Essential Malariology, "The malaria parasite," 9-13 and 14-20, and Atlas of Parasitic Pathology, 77-85, for a more detailed discussion on Plasmodium's life cycle. Information in this paragraph also from Campbell, Reece, et al, Biology, Figure 28.13, 557. 99 Townsville and Caims, "citizens were concerned that malaria-infected soldiers returning from Guadalcanal and Papua to hospitals in Queensland would spread malaria in epidemic proportions throughout the continent." Fortunate for Australians the epidemic never came, although the potential was high. The majority of Marines knew little of these details. What they reported was what their eyes and ears told them. William Schwacha recorded that "Natives say white man die during their rainy season. They get sick, enough men are sick now, some have been evacuated by both ship and plane, others lie in sick bays, wild with fever and other types of illness."35 The War on Malaria ~ Today, the US Navy provides such comprehensive information on malaria that entomologists are liable to cite them. The 2007 publication of the Navy Medical Department's Pocket Guide to Malaria Prevention and Control sums up decades of research. The Pacific War generally, with Guadalcanal as the specific catalyst, was the major milestone for the US Navy's drive to research malaria, to deal with this environmental adversity. Decades later, Pacific War lessons on malaria seemed entrenched. "Deployed forces cannot afford loss of personnel or depletion of resources for cure and convalescence. Protecting and improving the health of airmen, soldiers, sailors, and Marines while serving in such operations requires thorough understanding of the prevention and treatment of malaria." During the US build up in the South Pacific, malaria was first seriously encountered when a miscellany of units were sent to Efate, New Hebrides, in March 1942 (the Army was already suffering malaria problems in the failing defense of the Philippines). The Army's Americal Division, raised in Nouvelle Caledonie after Pearl Harbor, provided 500 soldiers while the 4th Marine Defense Battalion and some aerial Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 58. 35 William Schwacha, untitled diary (copy sent to author by Robert Shedd, March 6, 2006), 73. Pagination by Robert Shedd. 36 Navy Medical Department Pocket Guide to Malaria Prevention and Control, [Technical Manual NEHC-TM PM 6250.1 (2007)], Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, 2007, TO reported 133 cases of malaria out of its total of 947 men, a not insignificant 14%. And, as can be expected for a first, "the field medical units were not prepared to cope with the disease in such proportions."39 The medical solution was to demand more quinine—"an enormous amount of quinine."40 Quinine is a bitter, crystalline alkaloid extracted from the bark of a cinchona tree, a tropical tree residing mainly in Indonesia.41 Quinine interferes with Plasmodium's metabolism, but malariologist are still not completely sure how it works.42 In 1942 quinine levels were low for the Allies, especially since most of the Netherlands Indies (Java specifically) were firmly under Japanese control by the spring. The Netherlands Indies accounted for 90% of the world's production of cinchona bark.43 So, the solution to a lack of the natural remedy was a synthetic one. During the Great War, when Germany was unable to obtain quinine, they started experimenting with synthetics, eventually developing Atabrine in 1930.44 However, for the Americans in 1942, Atabrine was also at low levels and had to be used conservatively. This was not atypical, as shortages "in essential drugs—sulfaguanidine, bismuth, opium, antimalarials...plagued the system during 1942."45 In addition, Atabrine was not standardized by early 1942 and suffered from inconsistencies until it was perfected. It 37 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 238. The aerial units were Marine Fighter Squadron 212 and its parent organization Air Group 23. 38 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 239. To put 14% in context, consider that the War Department in 1942 desired a ratio of fixed-beds-to-troops at 10%. At the closing of 1942, their were only 3.8% beds-to-troops for the Army in the South Pacific. So, to have 14% of a unit's troops debilitated by malaria was quite serious (Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 108). Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 239. 40 Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 239. Cinchona trees are also found on mainland Asia and in South America, but in far less numbers. Cinchona was named after the Countess del Chinchon (the wife of a 1600s Peruvian Viceroy) who was nursed by the processed bark. To "cinchonize" is to treatment by this method. That quinine ("fever tree bark" by Peruvians and "Jesuit's Powder" by Europeans) was the active agent of the bark was not isolated until the 1880s (Essential Malariology, 1). 42 Essential Malariology, 280-281. 43 Clifford M. Zierer, "The Geographic Background," The Southwest and the War (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1974), 22. 44 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 124, and Essential Malariology, 2, which also stated that "[fjhere can be no doubt that the availability of this compound [Atabrine] played a very important role during the Second World War," implying that warfare in malarious regions of the globe would have been improbable if not for the synthetic advancement. 45 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 111. 101 was through this synthetic pharmaceutical that the US armed forces thought their greatest chances against malaria could be found. The war on malaria was synonymous with a war on mosquitoes, although both demanded different tactics. To keep mosquitoes from biting, the armed forces experimented with equipment like netting, but to force the use of headnets during combat was impossible. Repellants were considered "worthless" when available.46 For the 1st Marine Division, headnets and bednets had been assigned, and these items even made it out of Wellington, but then were "lost during the landing operation."47 The Navy's medical history of WWII surmised they were lost or purposely discarded. As evidence, they cite a Marine at length: "equipment issued for protection against this pest was more of a hindrance than a help, for a man operating in the jungle, through steaming heat and pelting rain, far from any base of supplies and obliged to carry his every need on his back, had neither the time nor the strength to bother about mosquito[s]...and head nets and gloves."48 The Division did manage to capture large Japanese netting and successfully utilized these in hospitals to protect recovering patients and operating rooms. Despite these other methods, a pharmaceutical solution was perceived to be the most efficient weapon against malaria. Chemically suppressing malaria was dramatically easier than trying to avoid a mosquito bite. Also, the practicality of a pill was obvious. Either than European or American territories in the Pacific, fighting malaria was done without the support of any pre-existing medical system. As the Army's medical history explained, "Americans could not transplant and maintain the traditional methods of public health in the midst of war. Military discipline, new drugs like Atabrine, and new insecticides had to take up the slack."49 In the South Pacific "Worthless" from Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 118, and also in History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 27. In addition, insect repellents were not available for the Division on Guadalcanal in the early phases {Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 7. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 7. History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 27. 49 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 45. Even then, the public health system in America, in relation to malaria (concentrated in the South) was inadequate in dealing with malaria. Besides, the first problem was admit that malaria existed and was widespread. Unfortunately, the symptoms were most often deemed to be conditions of class and hygiene, instead of arthropodic born blood disease. Consider also 102 everything "had to come from the outside." So, with no public health system in place, a small pill replicating a known effective, natural suppressant was the vanguard of malaria prevention. Considered part of "the most valuable drugs," quinine and Atabrine along with sulfas received primacy of place on Guadalcanal by being safeguarded in underground shelters.5 However, Atabrine was no miracle drug; it did not work on people who were already in the midst of an attack, and some men were allergic to it. Since Guadalcanal was the learning experience, organizational changes that occurred during the operation were too late to prevent mass infection. Even the 7th Marines, arriving September 18, became drained by the disease by early December. So, although Efate was the first encounter during the counter-offensive, Guadalcanal was the proving grounds for just how powerful malaria was and how the armed forces responded to it. Eventually, even General Vandegrift had to concede that malaria was a powerful enemy. In Noumea, on October 23, he had joined the newly appointed Commander of the South Pacific, Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. (replacing Admiral Ghormley). Admiral Halsey was hosting a conference that included the Army's General Harmon and General Patch, the Marine Corps Commandant General Holcomb, and the Navy's Admiral Turner.53 Both Turner and Holcomb had recently inspected Guadalcanal for themselves (as had Admiral Nimitz and the US Army Air Force's General Arnold). Admiral Halsey wanted a history of the battle to date and an assessment of the current situation from General Vandegrift. As Richard Frank noted about the conference, General Vandegrift "accented the poor physical state of the malaria-riddled 1st Marine Division and the effect on morale of the constant shelling that the Army and Navy both had the funding and incentive to research Atabrine while the southern States invested little money into their health boards. So, many Marines were not accustomed to a pharmaceutical approach to malaria prevention and not even accustomed to discoursing malaria as a transmitted disease. 50 Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 61. Medical Experience and Problems in the Guadalcanal Operation, Phase III, August 10 to August 20, 1942, 1, no author, no date, Folder 33, Box 7, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter Medical Experience, Phase III. 52 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 118. 53 General Millard F. Harmon was the commanding general of the Army Air Forces Pacific Ocean Areas, July 1942 to February 1945 fromR. Manning Ancell with Christine M. Miller, The Biographical Dictionary of World War II Generals and Flag Officers: The U.S. Armed Forces (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996), 400. General Thomas Holcomb was the Commandant of the Marine Corps, July 1939 to May 1941 and then Chief of Staff, I Marine Amphibious Corps, May 1941 to July 1943 (645). 103 and bombing and the endless stream of Japanese reinforcements." The official operational history noted that "General Vandegrift stressed the need for getting the 1st Marine Division to a healthier climate."55 Since extrication was the only solution by October, General Vandegrift was basically asking General Patch's Americal Division to replace the 1st Marine Division. However, the Japanese were conducting a land counter- offensive at that time and the sea-lanes were still under contest. The US Navy's supremacy in November finally allowed the Division to be replaced. Guadalcanal held unique challenges for the war on malaria. Guadalcanal was a particularly malaria-inundated environment. The Marines were not properly supplied due to the extended naval contest. There was also a general lack of knowledge of treating malaria, and this made "control of malaria impossible on Guadalcanal."56 A contemporary report simply called malaria "prevalent."57 Since no date was recorded on this report, it can be assumed to be pre-occupation. For comparison, the report gave more attention to leprosy, influenza, and ulcerating wounds (jungle rot). Ultimately, no matter what the US armed forces produced in this tumultuous period, it was the environmental conditions of Guadalcanal, "the primitive and tropical, not the temperate and urban [that] set the terms of the medical problem."58 Mosquitoes need stagnant or slow-moving water in which to lay their eggs. The northern terrain of Guadalcanal worked against the men as several natural and man- made features aided mosquito reproduction. The problem with where the Japanese had constructed the airstrip was that it lay in the northern coastal plain, which was basically the drainage zone of the central mountain range.59 This part of Guadalcanal was the flattest area in the Solomon Islands and this was the original impetus for why the Japanese selected it. Yet, in this area where most of the combat took place, five major rivers drained north into the ocean. Products of these rivers were brackish streams that then created small coastal swamps and lagoons, after sandbars plugged the deltas. Brackish streams, swamps, and lagoons were the prefect nesting grounds for breeding 54 Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Random House, 1990), 351. Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 359. 56 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 123. "Guadalcanal: General Information," no date, 1, Folder 9, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. 58 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 101. 59 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 46. 104 mosquitoes. Human activity also encouraged breeding grounds: as basic as the ruts from vehicles, craters from bombs, abandoned shelters, a footprint, and even the Marines' invaluable foxholes. These depressions in the ground retained water from rainfall and gave the mosquitoes even more selection for breeding sites. l In part it is because the various species of mosquitoes were willing to breed in differing situations that they are so successful. Part of the specific problem why malaria became such a debilitator on Guadalcanal was that proper measures were not taken up early enough in the campaign. A few major problems, occurring in August, allowed the majority of men to be bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes without the men or the Division giving it much consideration. It is also important to note that the Melanesians on Guadalcanal were themselves saturated with malaria. With this consideration, the medical personnel argued against the presence of Melanesians in the combat zone, much like how Australians argued against malarial Allied troops in Queensland. However, commanders felt that Melanesian labor was essential to free up riflemen. Consequently, even non-malarial mosquitoes, with a human source of Plasmodium nearby, had conditions present so that they themselves could become vectors. Personnel trained and able to conduct anti-malarial campaigns, in conjunction with proper equipment, were not available to the Division in August.62 In part, the impetus for such personnel came with evidence that the disease deserved increased attention. Equally, both the logistics nightmare back in Wellington and the rushed nature of the Guadalcanal operation in general meant that equipment of all kinds was not at sufficient levels. The Division lacked anti-malarial and anti-mosquito equipment but they also lacked other basics like adequate rations, tentage, and heavier artillery. The extended naval contest and the lack of US naval supremacy around the southern Solomon Islands meant that the ground commanders of the Division knew they were in a tenuous situation. The abundance of unknowns kept command's attention focused on immediacies—in which mosquitoes were erroneously not 60 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 46. 61 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 46. 62 Louis H. Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience and Lessons in the Conquest of Guadalcanal," no date, 1, Folder 8, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience." 105 included. As a post-Guadalcanal Navy medical report affirmed, "the desperate character of the fighting in the early weeks gave little opportunity to use them [malaria control personnel and equipment] if they been ready for use" and, more to the point, that the "Japanese allowed little time for fighting mosquitoes."63 The real problem was that for Atabrine to be effective, it needed to be ingested. Rumors spread about the negative side-effects of Atabrine were, unfortunately, believed by most.64 At first, the rumor was that Atabrine caused nausea, stomach pains, vomiting, and diarrhea. This particular rumor did have some basis in truth. When first produced, the recommended dose for Atabrine was 0.2 grams a day, two times per week.65 However, for the 'guinea pigs' of the Americal Division, this made 20% of that unit suffer from "nausea, vomiting, and headaches," including General Patch.66 Atabrine was then lowered to a dosage of 0.05 grams a day and the ill-effects departed.67 But, the social consequence lingered as no one failed to notice that after about one week, the color of their skin became yellowish. This was interpreted as evidence that something suspicious existed about the now ill-reputed pill. However, the most powerful rumor of all, striking at the heart of the young men's masculinity, was that Atabrine caused impotency.68 That this rumor was so believed was truly a tragedy, for if Atabrine was properly consumed from Fiji onwards, malaria would have been far less significant on Guadalcanal. However, the power of rumors cannot be underestimated. Academic Paul Fussell had noted that rumors acted as essential narratives for frontline troops.69 He asserted that rumors created hope in a "prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty," especially for those in constant "mortal danger," and that rumors Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 64 Bergerud, 93. 65 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 123. 66 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 123. Adverse effects of quinine ("Cinchonism") can include tinnitus (sensation of sounds in or around the ear), deafness, headaches, nausea, and visual disturbances (Essential Malariology, 281). Some extreme side-effects, and even death, can occur with high dosages or in hypersensitive cases. 67 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 123. 68 McMillan, 118, and Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 123. Sterility was sometimes tagged onto the rumor as well. 69 Paul Fussell, "Rumors of War," Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 [1989]), 35-51. 106 compensated for "the insignificance of actuality." In this sense of creating hope, positive rumors made sense. For instance, after the conclusions of New Britain and Peleliu, countless Marines heard and murmured that the Division would rest in Australia. That rumor reflected what they hoped for. However, the whispered affects of Atabrine was a negative rumor. Here Fussell posited that negative rumors were still "better than the absence of a narrative. Even a pessimistic, terrifying story is preferable to unmediated actuality." In this vein of the "absence of a narrative," consider that infantry were seldom provided with substantial information on past, current, or upcoming battles that they were, or were going to be, directly involved in. That Atabrine did originally have some side-effects was at the root of the rumors. That impotency was tacked on to nausea and headaches revealed that, as Fussell noted, "no one could believe the unbelievable."72 That "unbelievable" was that these young men, the vast majority of whom had very little sexual experience, at least until after Guadalcanal, might die without ever having sexual intercourse. Denying the anti-sexual affects of Atabrine meant that one was safe-guarding his masculinity, and that was priority over an annoying bug. They eventually discovered their folly. '"What they say about atabrine ain't true,' was a common comment around the Division the morning after the first 'liberty,'"73 noted George McMillan—once the Division had settled down in Melbourne and some of the men had fraternized with locals. But that would be in the summer of 1943, not 1942. Atabrine was delivered as one tablet taken twice daily with a dosage of 0.1 grams.74 This was twice as strong as what was recommended after the near-crisis on Efate, New Hebrides, but still only half of the original 'Efate-dosage' that made one- fifth of the Americal Division ill. The re-raising of the dosage on Guadalcanal was proof of the rising problem. Originally this was done twice a week but then increased to three times a week, making this dosage of Atabrine "mass usage." This was simply more proof for both the creeping crisis and reliance on the suppressant. This level of 70 Fussell, 36, and previous two citations. Eugene B. Sledge and Jim Johnson had both described their forlorn feelings revolving around their personal realizations of expendability in such a total war. 71 Fussell, 36. 72 Fussell, 43. 73 McMillan, 150. 74 Information in this paragraph from Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 7. 107 Atabrine was believed to produce toxins in about 10% of the men. For those cases, ten grains of quinine were given instead, as the natural remedy produced fewer toxins in the body.75 Eventually, when the men were saturated with Atabrine, nearing the end of November, the dosage lowered. When the scale of the debilitation by malaria became apparent, officers and corpsmen turned to new methods for instilling in the men the importance of Atabrine. First, they engaged indoctrination in an attempt to reverse the men's under-appreciation of the disease, highlighting "the crippling effect on military operations" of malaria.76 When that was not enough, officers and corpsmen watched the men swallow their Atabrine tablet. And when that was not enough, the corpsmen and officers inspected the men's mouths after watching them swallow the tablet.77 This was no small task. One corpsmen might have had handle hundreds of men. "Annex T: Medical," of the Division's final report, was quite critical of the officers in this role. The report criticized that, at first, the officers did not watch the men. Subsequently, "they [officers] never fully accepted the responsibility for the actual dispensing of this medication when it was made available to them."78 The post- battle medical examination echoed this criticism noting that "it was impossible to get complete cooperation from officers and men in the distribution and ingestion of this valuable suppressive drug, even under bivouac conditions."79 The report continued that medical personnel became aware of the lack of officer supervision in regards to Atabrine when "hundreds of tablets were picked up by messmen following their distribution." However, this trend of apathy fit into the overall American view of malaria in mid-1942 and the undervaluing of the disease in the early phases of Guadalcanal. Decades later, the role of command in relation to malaria was certainly a lesson learned. The 2007 Pocket Guide to Malaria Prevention and Control set out the History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 16. 76 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 11 History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 16. 78 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 7. 79 Medical Experience and Problems in the Guadalcanal Operation, Phase IV, August 21 to September 19, 1942, 1, no date, Folder 33, Box 7, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter Medical Experience, Phase IV, 1. 80 Medical Experience, Phase IV, 1. 108 responsibilities of command. It recognized that "[s]uccess is achieved only when the line commanders are convinced that principles of preventive medicine are an essential element in force protection" and that "the countermeasures necessary to prevent malaria must be enforced by line commanders."81 The guide also stressed the role of medical personnel, but the initial emphasis was on line commanders—reflecting the knowledge that discipline issues can blur into medical one. Still, after all that trouble, even with officers watching, there was no guarantee that the men actually swallowed the pill. Most veterans have recorded taking their Atabrine pills and the enforcement of this by the corpsmen and officers. David Slater recalled that "an officer would pop the pills into a lineup of men, quite a few of whom would spit it out as soon as possible."82 The power of the rumor was difficult to abate, and Atabrine was "resisted by many because of its conceived side effects of sterility, and its real action in turning the skin yellow."83 Veteran Donald Fall remembered that to ensure that no Marine avoided his Atabrine intake, the corpsmen "tossed an Atabrine tablet in your mouth to make sure you took it. However some people kept under their tongue and spit out when he passed on. Scuttlebutt was that it made you impotent, anyway when you peed it came out a dark orange."84 Ralph Evans recalled that or Atabrine also colored the whites of their eyes. That Atabrine did discolor skin, urine, and eyes gave credibility to the rumors. In May 1943 the Division modified some of its approaches towards Atabrine, probably in light of criticism from medical personnel directed towards the line officers during the Guadalcanal campaign and due to malaria's resurgence on New Britain (implying lessons not learned that might have been). A report issued on May 7, 1943 by Captain J. Ellis, recommended that failure to take Atabrine should be made into a "disciplinary offense."86 The report noted that the use of Atabrine would "permit the 81 Navy Medical Department Pocket Guide to Malaria Prevention and Control, [Technical Manual NEHC-TM PM 6250.1 (2007)], Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, 2007, Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 109. 110 investments after the shattering of their slave-based economy. Thus, what should have OQ been part of a southern doctor's repertoire was not. The fact that malaria had become so normalized in the south actually added to it being ignored by doctors. As historian James Young wrote, "[Southern medical authorities] recognized the fact that malaria's presence was accepted as part of the living conditions of the South since it had always been present."89 Young continued to compare malaria to our concept of the common cold. "Long before the Civil War malaria was so widespread and of such common occurrence that its yearly ravages were accepted with the stoic resignation that is today reserved for the common cold." Young concluded by stressing that normalization had long occurred, which was how something so every day became so neglected. He wrote, "[t]he ordinary is very seldom given special attention and malaria was such an integral part of the living conditions that it had never been singled out for special attention." Hospitalization for malaria was a problematic issue for the medical companies. Hospitalization only occurred during the acute phase and patients were expected to be moved during an emergency, as "admissions from ships and combat areas took precedent."90 This was to be expected as malaria's kill rate was quite low.91 Despite that malaria victims in the acute phase of an attack needed bed space, an emergency situation like a naval battle demanded that those casualties be prioritized. Originally, the medical officers had planned for ten days in bed in the case of the acute phase, but this was difficult to accomplish. Bed space on Guadalcanal was simply at too high a premium for a disease that was too wide-spread. However, all hospitals eventually created specialized wards and assigned personnel to tackle malaria specifically.92 Fighting malaria on Guadalcanal was a serious investment born of absolute necessity. The Navy asserted that there were "more than five times as many casualties from malaria as from wounds in the South Pacific area."93 Army hospitals in the South Pacific region in 1943, "counted almost 152,000 admissions, 60,000 of them malaria 88 Young, 50, and 30-31. 89 Young, 34, and following two citations. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 8. 91 Medical Experience, Phase IV, 3. 92 Medical Experience, Phase IV, 3. 93 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. Ill cases, an alarming 39 percent." The Army established Joint Malaria and Insect Control Island Organizations where a malariologist reported directly to the island's commander. The malariologist then commanded a survey unit with entomologists and parasitologists, a control unit with engineers or entomologists, and a labor section utilizing Navy Construction Battalions, Army engineers, Army medical sanitary companies, anti-malaria details, and local aborigine support where possible.95 This set up was typically only for an advanced base, like Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, but established organizational how malaria was to be dealt with. The Navy stepped up its war on malaria when, in November 1942, they established a malaria control unit. November was the critical month for malaria. As the post-Guadalcanal Navy medical report explained, "by November, the case rate was about 1800 per 1000 per year!"96 The first malaria control unit consisted of two officers and eight enlisted men who oiled pools of water, improved drainage, aided in the selection of bivouacking sites, and set to work training an Army medical unit when they eventually arrived.97 By this time though, P. falciparum had thoroughly imbedded itself in the men and only a reprieve could properly rehabilitate them. Before the malaria control unit arrived, oiling of water was not systematically approached and none of the medical personnel had "any specialized training in prevention work."98 Still even when the unit arrived, there were unreachable mosquito breeding areas (but in which the mosquitoes could still reach the perimeter).99 Like headnets, oiling stagnant water was another weapon in the war on mosquitoes that helped, but did not completely control the situation. Regardless, "[m]alaria control units and malarial drugs for prophylaxis and treatment poured into the area [both Guadalcanal specifically and the South Pacific generally]."100 94 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 109. 95 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 105, citing Paul A. Harper, et al, "New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, Saint Matthias Group, and Ryukyu Islands" in Ebbe Curtis Hoff, ed, Communicable Diseases: Malaria (Washington: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1963), 442. 96 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 97 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 124. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 7. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 7, and History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 27. 100 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 112 Just six weeks before invading New Britain, in November 1943, the planning for Cape Gloucester reflected a new respect for malaria. The Army supplied two of these units in addition to two evacuation hospitals, three medical companies, several surgery teams, and a medical supply platoon. The Navy supplied roughly the same. Although malaria control units had relatively small numbers of men, the Army's units were organizationally separate from the regular medical units and made up two of the fourteen total medical units to be deployed on New Britain.101 Atabrine was stressed in a New Britain pre-action report. "All personnel will be given 0.1 gram atabrine [sic] daily under the direct supervision of an officer."102 It seemed then that the criticism of the medical personnel towards line officers on Guadalcanal had received enough attention to warrant a simple but straightforward directive from the commanding general. The Division itself now employed a malaria control section, comprising of two officers and two enlisted men. Although four men seemed small, this section now outnumbered or equaled executive officers in several other sections, including legal, chaplain, paymaster, quartermaster, transport quartermaster, communications, mapping, photographic, audit section, and the liaisons to General Headquarters [General MacArthur]. So, officers and their men designated specifically to combat malaria were well represented, organizationally independent, and included into the upper echelons of command. The Japanese and Malaria ~ All the ill that befell the Americans in regards to malaria was magnified for the Japanese. Malaria did arguably afflict the Japanese more, and in that sense could be interpreted as a friend of the Marines. As the Army's official history of Guadalcanal noted, "[i]f malaria decimated the American ranks, it caused havoc among the enemy. Among the Japanese probably every man was a victim. They had no systematic malaria 101 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation: "Annex G- 1st Mar Div Operation Order #2-43: Annex C: Medical," 1, November 14, 1943, Folder 2, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex C, Medical." 102 Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex C, Medical," 4. 103 Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex H: First Marine Division Station List, January 1, 1944," 3, Folder 2, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. 113 control, few mosquito nets, and inadequate field hospitals."104 Furthermore, the Army's history, deriving its Japanese battle casualty figures from interviews with General Hyakutake and the Americal Division's intelligence reports, estimated that 9000 Japanese died mainly from the disease from August to February (malaria being dominant, but included was also beriberi, dysentery, and including malnutrition).105 Three Marines died from malaria. The disparity is striking. This reasoning would posit that perhaps it would be more discursively appropriate to claim that a Marine victory on Guadalcanal was achieved, in large part, because malaria created ineffective Japanese soldiers. Despite the numerous flaws in the American response to malaria on Guadalcanal, the Japanese did not come close to the same level of success. This logic has been employed at various points in the literature. For instance, a footnote in the Army's West Point Military History Series noted that "[i]t might be added that during the campaign the Japanese suffered even more severely from such deleteriants than did the Americans."106 Louis H. Roddis, who prepared the post-Guadalcanal Navy medical report and would also be the editor of the Naval Medical History of World War II, engaged this reasoning as well. "Fortunately the Japs, who had been there longer, were in a worse way, and were being decimale [sic] not only by malaria but dysentery, beriberi, and other tropical diseases."107 The Japanese brought no provisions for long-term fighting or any structures and equipment larger than the needs of a short-term bivouac and swift assault. After all, the structures and equipment on Guadalcanal were originally theirs. To Japanese ground commanders, recapturing those specific losses appeared self-evident. This thinking manifested itself in practice; troops were issued only days worth of rations before embarking—they commonly believed that after the battle they would be munching on US food. Furthermore, the same culturally-based thinking that produced the banzai charge also negated the idea of settling down to a prolonged battle. The Japanese 104 John Miller Jr., United States Army in World War II; The War in the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (Washington: Historical Division, GPO, 1949), 229. Hereinafter Miller, Jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive. 105 Miller, Jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive, 229, and John H. Bradley with Jack W. Dice, West Point Military History Series: The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific (New York: Avery Publishing Group, 1989), Appendix 10, 279. 106 Bradley and Dice, 130. 107 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 114 soldier was pushed fast while his military organizational apparatus, for Guadalcanal in 1942, prepared little for any situation short of a speedy victory. In this sense, environmental adversities were grossly ignored by the Japanese. Figures about total committed troops, compared to battle casualties, foster the logic that the Japanese suffered malaria more than the Marines. These numbers would suggest that malaria, and not the Marines, is what collapsed the Japanese land counter- offenses. Unfortunately, accurate Japanese numbers are not conclusively known, but several estimates relatively agree. The American numbers are known; as Richard Frank noted, the US committed 60,000 ground troops overall and lost, in grand total for all services, 7100 men. For the Japanese, the Army's official history presented both its own and the Americal Division's "conservative estimates."1 For the Americal Division, an estimated 32,000 Japanese had landed while 24,000 became casualties. For the Army's history, 37,680 Japanese landed on Guadalcanal while 28,580 were casualties. An average of these two figures for Japanese killed in action would place their figure at 26,290 KIA. If malaria was to account for all 9000 of these 26,290 Japanese KIA, or 34%, then it could be argued that malaria was an American friend. However, this argument contains an important flaw. Attacking Japanese forces—Ichiki Detachment in August, Kawaguchi Brigade in September, the Sendai Division in October—having just landed on Guadalcanal, were not yet riddled with malaria. Conversely, the US defenders saw continually increasing numbers of malaria victims and cases from other disorders. Regardless of admission figures onto the sick list, many of the functional Marines were still suffering from lower to moderate intensities of malaria (and other diseases). At the point of combat, the Japanese troops had not yet become saturated with these diseases. The idea here was since the "tropics weakened nearly everyone,"109 if all malaria-sick Marines were to report to a hospital, then virtually no one would be protecting the perimeter—an inconceivable possibility. What malaria did do to benefit the Americans was to reduce the number of defeated Japanese forces that could regroup and join subsequent attacks. However, this bonus Miller, Jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive, 104, and following two sentences. Hough, et al, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 359. 115 was mostly enjoyed by the 2n Marine Division, the Americal Division, and the 25 Infantry Division during their mop-up operations.110 All this leads to the question, what was it that defeated the successive waves of attacking Japanese troops? Although these troops had no signs of malaria by the time of reaching the sharp end, even two days of fast marching through the impenetrable jungle badly enervated them. Even one or two days of rest before charging would have greatly increased their chances of success. General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi, reporting to his superiors why the Battle of Edson's Ridge failed, expressed frustration over Guadalcanal's jungle. He wrote that "because of the devilish jungle, the brigade was scattered all over and completely beyond my control. In my whole life I have never felt so helpless."111 Captain Jiro Katsumata (of the "Left Wing Unit,"112) wrote in his diary, in reference to the draining jungle march before the Battle for Henderson Field, "I cannot any longer think of anything, the enemy, food, home or even myself... [I am] only a spirit drifting toward an undefined, unknowable world." Here the Japanese lament was similar to the Marines' reflections on the jungle—frustration and enervation. Never having felt so helpless was a testament to the amount of personal energy it took to move through the jungle. As Eric Bergerud summarized, "in the South Pacific, the jungle killed."114 While thousands of Americans suffered malaria on Guadalcanal, the Japanese did not benefit from convalescence or chemical suppressants. Subsequently they suffered the long-term affects of malaria in a way that the Americans did not. This meant that the loss of red blood cells over time resulted in anemia, the lack of adequate hemoglobin (oxygen carrier) in the blood.115 It can be surmised that the defeated Japanese forces suffered serious anemia which caused "excessive tiredness and fatigability, breathlessness on exertion, pallor, and poor resistance to infection."116 These Divisions preformed the first American Corps-level operations in the Pacific during the final phases of Guadalcanal. This period is portrayed in James Jones' The Thin Red Line (1962). 111 Kiyotaki Kawaguchi in Frank, 232. 1 n Primarily the 29th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Sendai Division. 113 Jiro Katsumata in Frank, 346. 114 Bergerud, 61. 115 Concise Colour Medical Dictionary, Fourth Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 428. Hereinafter Oxford Medical Dictionary. Oxford Medical Dictionary, 29. 116 On the operational and tactical level, the jungle was an enemy to all who tried to penetrate it. In the two nights of the Battle of Henderson Field, virtually half of all Japanese troops present in the vicinity of the American perimeter were not present at the actual points of engagement. For instance, on the night of October 24 the entire "Right Wing Unit" of the Sendai Division (basically one-third of that unit) never materialized to attack the perimeter. They simply missed the battle, lost in dense brush, without control or direction. Samuel Morison noted that the thousands of Japanese troops landed by October 15, intended for the Battle of Henderson Field, "could, in theory, be deployed all over Guadalcanal while the Marines were pinned down to their perimeter around Henderson Field. But the hated 'Canal jungle now turned American ally, thwarting neat Japanese plans for envelopment."117 The next night the Right Wing Unit guarded against an imaginary US threat and again was not present at the point of contact. The Imperial Navy partly blamed the failure of the Imperial Army at the Battle for Henderson Field on, in Frank's words, a "gross underestimation of the terrain difficulties."119 Tactical realities were the other major undoing of the Japanese, arguably the most important, as discussed earlier. So, although the Japanese on Guadalcanal suffered more from malaria than their American counterparts, the actual Japanese sufferers were survivors, deserters, and lost remnants of defeated forces. They became sick with malaria when they left the front to meander lost in the bewildering jungle. However, malaria kept defeated forces from marshalling, and this was assistance to the US forces. For instance, when General Hyakutake arrived on October 10, he found that the remnants of both Ichiki's and Kawaguchi's units (five battalions of 600 men each) constituted just one battalion.120 This was an important contribution to saving Americans lives; if malaria did not kill the defeated forces, someone had to. However, the case should not be overstated. Ultimately, the jungle and tactical realities destroyed the Japanese land offenses; malaria followed like a ghost. Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942-February 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 189-190. 118 Frank, 364, and Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 191. 119 Frank, 365. 120 Frank, 338. 117 General Vandegrift posited that the problems with his Division's performance were derived from inadequacies of training (referring to both North Carolina and Wellington). He concluded, in relation to his men, that "[o]n every occasion our troops proved themselves superior to the Japanese in actual combat. Their great deficiency 191 was inadequate physical training and hardening prior to combat." The Japanese were not the cause of the Division's unfitting—it was in the ability of the men to endure environmental adversity. The general's concepts of training and hardening revolved largely around the young man being able to withstand the myriad of environmental adversities, since the Marines were already "superior to the Japanese in actual combat." Louis Roddis echoed this sentiment when he concluded that there was a "[necessity for good physical selection of fighting men."122 The basis for that was that "jungle fighting took rugged men."123 Thomas Barry commented that "[w]e used to say the jungle was as big an enemy as the Japs and we were right."124 Remembering Malaria ~ Suffering from the symptoms of malaria was not easy for the Marines to forget. The reoccurrence of the attacks sometimes lasted longer than the war itself, as Robert Shedd stated that "all together, I had nine attacks. The last one after I got back to Parris 1 9S Island in 1945." This was not uncommon of the various disorders that afflicted the men as recovery often went on well past September 2, 1945. The attacks themselves were characterized by temperature fluctuations and intense aches and pains. The most salient oddity of malaria was that it made the men feel cold in a warm climate. Robert Shedd later described one of his nine attacks. "When I was coming down with an attack of malaria, I would have an ache in the back of my eyes and my joints would ache. As the fever got higher, I would get cold and no amount of blankets could make me 1 96 warm." That Atabrine and quinine were preventative medicine, and not a cure for the 121 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 6. 122 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 123 Roddis, "Naval Medical Experience," 1. 124 Thomas Barry in Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World WarII(NewYoik: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 96-97. 125 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. 126 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 1. 118 already sick; their apparent lack of effectiveness on those in the acute phase contributed to the Marines suspicion of the pill. "We were given quinine to keep us from getting malaria, but it didn't do any good." With malaria's rampage incapacitating the men, the lack of faith in the pharmaceutical was understandable. Robert Leckie remembered a comrade's reaction to the acute phase of the malaria attack. When Leckie's comrade returned from the battalion aid station he "was still feverish, but there was nothing they could do for him. He lay in his hole, unable to eat. When the chills came, we piled our blankets on top of him. When the fever broke and the sweat began pouring off him, he lay back and grinned. He could barely talk, but he whispered, 'It feels so good. It feels so good. So nice and cool.'"128 The enervating power of malaria was undeniable. Donald Fall described his bouts with malaria on Guadalcanal. "I came down with malaria in October on the Canal. Two weeks in sick bay, a few quinine and back on the line. I {would] shake violently and suddenly it breaks for a short time."129 He continued to note that his appetite and intestines also suffered, remembering that "the minute you look at the food you lost your appetite. You felt the need for a bowel movement and a little fluid dribbled out."130 Charles Frankel commented that his spells with malaria were interspersed with danger from Japanese shelling. Hospitalization on Guadalcanal meant closer attention was paid to recovery, but it did not necessarily equate with safety. Frankel remembered that in "early October, 1942, on Guadalcanal, I had a sever bout with Malaria. I was so weak that I could not walk or stand. I was put into the sick bay...located near Henderson Field. Every day we were attacked by either bombers or naval gunfire. We left our hospital beds, cots on the dirt floor. We crowded into Japanese bunkers and waited out the attacks."131 However, Frankel's enervation meant that even moving from the cot to bunker was an ordeal. He explained that "I was so weak during my stay at the sick bay, the corpsman used to drag me to the bunkers. As soon as I was able to walk, I was sent back to my unit."132 Robert Shedd revealed the hospital situation. "One time 127 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. 128 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 125. 129 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 3. 130 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 3. 131 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 7. 132 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 7. 119 my temp was 105.1 don't remember what treatment I got on Guadalcanal, but one time I ended up in the Division hospital which was not far from the airport. This was not your usual hospital. It was a roof on poles. ...The lucky ones had a stretcher for a bed."133 Anthony Chillemi remembered that his services as a corpsman were steadily becoming about caring for malaria victims. Towards the end of September he recalled that "[mjalaria and Dengue Fever were becoming major concerns for everyone. We spent more time caring for people stricken with malaria than for any other injury or illness." Treating others was his duty, until the disease afflicted Chillemi himself in November, making him another number on the sick list. He recalled that: At first, I became bone-chilled cold and then alternatively flame-burning hot. I began to ache severely all over. I thought my joints would break and my head would explode. By daylight I was shaking and shivering uncontrollably with chills and was unable to walk. .. .1 had never felt or been this sick before. My surroundings or my position were no longer of any importance. I was only aware of how bad and helpless I felt."135 For Chillemi, his malaria attack was so severe that the scope of his consciousness and existence narrowed, focusing only on his pain and no longer about the campaign. Veteran Irving Reynolds remembered how pervasive malaria was for the 1st Raider Battalion. During the Battle for Bloody Ridge he alleged: "[cjan't prove it, but I'll bet you at least half the Marines on the Ridge had malaria at the time. But, then again, I guess the Japs did also—hell, mosquitoes ain't choosy." Veteran Samuel Taxis, an officer with the 3rd Defense Battalion, had a similar sentiment. He held that "I don't know anyone in my battalion that didn't have malaria at one time or another."137 Later on New Britain, Leckie recounted his own bout with malaria. "To lie on my back was torture, to lie on my stomach a torment. I tried to lie on my side, but even 133 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 1. 134 Anthony Chillemi, "GuadalcanalAugust 7, 1942 to December 9, 1942," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 33. Hereinafter Chillemi, Guadalcanal. 135 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 41. 136 Irving Reynolds in Berry, 120. 137 Samuel Taxis, USMC, Oral History Transcript, August 7, 1981, 143, Box 144, Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division 120 i io here my bones ached as though they were being cracked in the grip of giant pliers." Eating was out of the question. "I could not eat, I could not drink-not even water. They fed me through the veins, intravenously, for I do not know how long-ten days, two weeks."139 The fever was explained as such: "[a]ll the time I lay baking-not burning or flaming, understand, but baking, as though I were in an oven-feeling the will to live shrivel within me...comprehending nothing, lying there, only a rag of aching bones slowly shrinking in the glowing oven of malaria."140 Unfortunately, there was really no choice but to suffer; however, group cohesion and sympathy from comrades aided toleration. The most reprieve they received was time in a bed (or a cot or tiny mattress on a dirt floor), an improvement to a foxhole, but not a real solution. The Marines remembered mosquitoes as an aggressive insect. David Slater recalled that as "a city boy, the little animals surprised and frightened the hell out of me. The mosquitoes were especially ubiquitous and pesty [sic]."141 Anthony Chillemi described a scene west of Henderson Field, where his medical company was using Japanese bunkers. "I spent a great deal of time in one of these bunkers and I thank God for the Japanese penchant to build safe holes in the ground. .. .Too bad they didn't build the bunkers mosquito proof."142 Chillemi continued implying that safety from bombing meant contending with mosquitoes. "Each hour we spent in relative safety from physical harm, we spent the same number of hours exposed to malaria and dengue carrying mosquitoes. It was probably my imagination, but it seemed mosquitoes were more vicious and determined in the bunkers than elsewhere."143 The 1st Marine Division had to leave Guadalcanal, primarily because of their lost battle with malaria. Other diseases, combat, bombardment, fatigue, and general living conditions also contributed in central ways to the unfitting of the Division. However, it was the parasite and insect vector combination that saturated and enervated the Marine Corps' first fielded division in its first campaign. 138 Leckie, 269. 139 Leckie, 269-270. 140 Leckie, 270. 141 David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2006, 2. 142 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 22. 143 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 22 Differing mosquito species prefer resting either indoors or outdoors after blood meals. Mosquitoes not digesting found the men huddled in a confined space easy targets. When people concentrate, the sensory mechanisms used to track mammals are aided. 121 Chapter Five The Microscopic Front: Disease on Guadalcanal That disease has plagued armies is no new revelation. As Albert Cowdrey admitted, the "microbes that cause disease and infect wounds had always been the secret foe of armies."1 Cowdrey also called diseases the "enemy within," a force that had "historically caused more devastation than the human enemy outside." When the entire global conflict of WWII settled, historians could say that deaths from war had finally outweighed deaths by diseases and wounds, a distinctly 20th Century 'accomplishment.' As the Navy's official medical history noted for WWII, for "every 100 wounded men 98 recovered, in contrast with the experience in World War I, when only about 90 recovered out of every 100 wounded men."2 This accomplishment was striking when considering comparisons to previous centuries, as in "earlier wars, one-half or more of all wounded men died as a result of their injuries." Yet, the unique challenges set forth by the environmental conditions of Guadalcanal meant that the 1st Marine Division was seemingly experiencing warfare of the past. Nature's microscopic front meant that for doctors and corpsmen, "[casualties from diseases were more constant and numerous"3 than combat wounds. For the 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific, disease was an essential part of their story and although it killed few, it was a daily component and inseparable from the wartime experience. Medical science had advanced dramatically by 1942, compared to a century earlier. Germ theory had been proven in 1875 and was widely accepted by 1900.4 The advanced developments in medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, inoculations, and so on would have boggled the mind of a Marine in the 1860s. The US Navy's 1942 budget of over $31 billion insured that the majority of men in its service were probably seeing the Albert E. Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 3, and for next sentence. 2 The History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II: A Narrative and Pictorial Volume, Volume 1, (Washington: GPO, 1953), v, and for next citation. Hereinafter History the Medical Department in World War II. 3 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase IV, "Annex B: Medical," 4, June 25, 1943, Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives and Records Association, "Archive II," College Park, MD. 4 William C. Campbell, "Introduction," The Germ Theory Calendar, 2007, The Sick List on Guadalcanal ~ In mid-1943, the Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation was officially completed and submitted to the Corps and Navy. Two of the report's annexes supplied numerical figures detailing medical issues and battle casualties sustained by the 1st Marine Division, August 7 to December 10, 1942. "Annex T: Medical" included a narrative describing medical problems faced after the 5 Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 90. History the Medical Department, vi. 7 Mary Ellen Condon-Rail and Albert E. Cowdrey, United States Army in World War II; The Technical Services: The Medical Department: Medical Service in the War Against Japan (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1998), 45. 8 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex X: August 7 to December 10, 1942," 5, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. 123 third week of September (coinciding with the arrival of the 7 Marines from Eastern Samoa).9 Supply issues, evacuations, and malaria were featured in the small discussion. "Annex X: Numerical Summary of Casualties in Units of First Marine Division (reinforced)" contained no discussion, just numbers. While "Annex T: Medical" also provided statistics on malaria and evacuations, "Annex X: Casualties"10 provided both a chronological breakdown of battle casualties and an "Alphabetical List of Diagnosis with Total Number of Admissions and Readmissions for Each, First Marine Division Only"—the so-called "sick list."11 The fifty-eight items on the sick list were divided into three categories: "Diseases," "Injuries," and "Poisoning Venom (Insects)."12 hi its most basic elements, injuries were conceived of as battle casualties, while diseases were non-battle casualties. To create a gauge by which to determine the level of importance for environmentally-based medical challenges, the old division of disease versus injuries (battle versus non-battle casualties) requires modification. Instead, diseases and injuries, for this case study, are broken down into environmental and non- environmental factors. This is necessary because under the old categorization, not every disease was environmentally-based, like appendicitis, nor was every injury necessarily derived from the Japanese. Consider, a sprained joint or muscle was conceived of as an injury to contemporaries, but the actual sprain might have been from a misplaced step, from the terrain, from fighting with an enemy soldier, and so forth. These "circumstances of occurrence" were noted on the individual's health records as policy 9 Other medical annexes, supplied incrementally, detailed narratives and figures about medical challenges faced for the phases prior to September 19. They constitute volume one of the final report. Volume two of the final report is technically 'the final report' with the assumption that the reader possessed the first volume. 10 "Annex X: Casualties" is used here instead of the longer (above mentioned) title. 11 In addition, this annex includes "Summary: Killed in Action or Died as a Result of Wounds, First Marine Division (Reinforced), 7 August to 10 December, 1942," which concludes that 627 Marines (1st Mar. Div.) died from action (with another 23 KIA attached miscellaneous naval personnel). This source, unlike the numerical summary, has separate pagination despite also being from "Annex X: Casualties." 12 The Navy officially used "Diseases and Conditions;" the "conditions" being dropped by the Division in the field. Conversely, the "insects" in parentheses, after "poisoning venom," was not in the original Navy nomenclature. 124 1 ^ dictated, but these details were, unfortunately, not included in the figures presented in the final report. Since the circumstances of occurrence cannot be determined for every one of the 10,635 acceptances onto the sick list, it can never be known with absolute certainty what factors produced ineffective Marines. Nonetheless, the sick list is an useful source for providing a basic mode of comparison between environmental and non-environmental factors in creating these medical ineffectives. In grand total, the 1st Marine Division suffered 10,635 casualties (battle and non-battle) on Guadalcanal. Tabulated figures of the number of cases and individuals entered onto the sick list show that environmental agency produced 7574 cases out of a total of 10,635, or 71% of the Division's overall casualties.14 Non-environmental agency accounted for 2395 individuals, or 22% of overall casualties. Undetermined factors rest at 666 cases or individuals, or 6% of overall casualties. The top two dangers to Marines were malaria with 5749 cases, while gunshot wounds claimed another 1472 individuals. Gastroenteritis created 676 cases and the acute phase of catarrhal fever saw 371 cases. The 314 cases from "All Other Causes" is technically fifth place but none of the individual contributing diseases totaled ten admissions. This item makes up more than half of the undetermined category. The sick list only recorded items that received ten or more admissions. "Killed in action, Details Not Known," the only other injury in the top eight incapacitating agents, aside from gunshots wounds, claimed 241 individuals. But like disease's "All Other Causes," this category is a catch-all for miscellaneous agents. Last, the acute phase of tonsillitis created 177 cases, while psychoneurosis, specifically "war neurosis" (as opposed to "situational" or "hysteria"), witnessed 131 cases. Complicating a direct comparison between diseases and injuries is the fact that admissions for diseases were conducted in a case by case manner while admissions for injuries were recorded by the individual. In other words, the same person could have 13 "Chapter 15: Diagnostic Nomenclature," Manual of the Medical Department of the United States Navy (Washington: GPO, 1939), 278-279, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, Washington. Hereinafter Manual of the Medical Department of the United States Navy. Figures derived from Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, Annex X: Numerical Summary of Casualties in Units of First Marine Division (reinforced) (or "Annex X: Casualties"), 3-4, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Contemporary figures presented in Appendix A and modified figures presented in Appendices B. 125 had malaria several times, while each case of gunshot wounds was individually recorded. The sick list also did not distinguish between Marines with two or more conditions at the same time. This was referred to as the "precedence of titles," whereas "[n]o case shall be carried on the sick list simultaneously with more than one diagnosis."15 The "graver" problem received priority. Readmissions were noted on the patient's paperwork, as per medical department rules,16 but this distinction was not included in the final report. There were three types of readmissions, with several subtleties added, so the Division medical staff dropped this complication from the overall conclusion. To be admitted onto the sick list meant that a Marine was very sick. His functionality had virtually collapsed. To be sick on Guadalcanal was different from being sick back home. On Guadalcanal the operational situation was so tenuous that there was little room for inactivity. The close victories in the major battles proved this in retrospect, but it was also known at the time. If every man who became sick by civilian standards was to be admitted onto the sick list, then most of the Division, by mid-November, would have been hospitalized. The men understood this and "many [Marines] suffered from a milder form of malaria or other illness and did not turn in at the hospital at all."17 The men were not on Guadalcanal to linger in hospitals; they needed to defend the airstrip at all costs. Consequently, the definition of sick shifted. Environmental Agency ~ Compounding over time, especially with the onset of the rainy season towards the end of October on Guadalcanal, malaria produced 5749 cases on the sick list. Malaria was the prime environmental adversity on Guadalcanal—by itself it accounted for 54% of all casualties. Although containing a limited discussion on malaria, the Navy's short medical history recognized that: Manual of the Medical Department of the United States Navy, 261. 16 Manual of the Medical Department of the United States Navy, 263. Hereinafter "admissions" and "cases" is synonymous with 'admissions and readmissions.' 17 Frank O. Hough, Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Volume I, (FMFRP 12-34, Doctrine Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, VA: 2000 [1958]), 359. 126 Enabling the Navy and Marine Corps to defeat the enemy also meant recognizing that disease more often than enemy action threatened this goal. During the battle for Guadalcanal in the Solomons, malaria caused more casualties than Japanese bullets. Shortly after the landings, the number of patients hospitalized with malaria exceeded all other diseases. Some units suffered over a 100 percent casualty rate with personnel being hospitalized more than once. Only when malaria and other tropical diseases were brought 1 R to heel could the Pacific war be won. While the 1st Marine Division was arguably the premier ground unit of the US Armed Forces, malaria was the premier unit of the environment's microscopic front. Similar to malaria in geographical distribution and symptoms was dengue fever (or breakbone fever), a disease often mentioned by both the literature and veterans but relatively small on the sick list, producing ten cases. Part of the genus Flavivirus, species Dengue virus is transmitted by mosquitoes, species Aedis Aegypti. African by origin, Aedis Aegypti now resides in most tropical and subtropical climes. However, the South Pacific was dominated by the Anopheles genus, explaining the low admissions for dengue. Symptoms include "severe pains in the joints and muscles, headache, sore throat, fever, running of the eyes, and an irritating rash."19 If mosquito-based diseases were bad enough, the men still had to face a host of digestive tract problems that typically resulted in diarrhea and dehydration. The sick list itemized four related diseases: acute enterocolitis (fourteen cases), acute enteritis (seventeen), bacillary dysentery (eleven), and gastroenteritis (676). The last, gastroenteritis (or stomach flu), was a heavy-hitting viral or bacterial (i.e. salmonella, Escherichia coli) disease producing an impressive 676 cases, making it the second- most prevalent medical condition after malaria, and third most incapacitating agent after malaria and gunshot wounds. In its most basic sense, gastroenteritis is the inflammation of the membranes lining the stomach (gastro) and intestines (enteric), "usually due to acute infection by viruses or bacteria or to food-poisoning toxins" with the result of vomiting and A Short History of Navy Medicine, Jan K. Herman and Andre B. Sobocinski, Oxford Medical Dictionary, 291. 1 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase IV, "Annex B: Medical," 1. 22 "Digestion Basics: The Role of the Immune System in the Digestive Tract," IBS [Irritable Bowel Syndrome] Treatment Center, 2005, Anthony Chillemi remembered dealing with cases of gastroenteritis. He noted that because sanitation was treated with a lack of proper attention early on, several diseases quickly afflicted the Marines. "Minimal attention to environmental concerns gave rise to.. Jock itch, fungal infections, oozing sores, infected scratches, poor-healing cuts, and a host of gastrointestinal problems with diarrhea becoming the norm." Problems compounded over time as "the longer we remained on the Island, the more frequent we were faced with diarrhea problems and the infectiousness of bacillary and amebic dysentery."27 Chillemi attributed many of these problems to the inability to wash hands properly. He continued by blaming the oral-fecal route,28 noting that "gastroenteritis probably arose from cross-infection in the hand-to-mouth-to-anal route from lack of hand washing facilities. There were no ready means to wash hands for anyone using the latrine during the lengthy stay on the Island." Virtually synonymous with gastroenteritis was acute enteritis, the inflammation of the small intestines resulting in diarrhea. Concentrated in October, with no reported cases in either August or December, acute enteritis accounted for seventeen cases. Similarly, acute enterocolitis, affecting both the small and large intestines, created another fourteen cases, also concentrated in October. Again, once sanitation issues improved in November, digestive tract diseases abated. Bacillary dysentery (or shigellosis) resulted in eleven cases, again with none in August or December. Most often caused by infection, dysentery is characterized by severe diarrhea with the passage of mucus and blood.31 Bacillary dysentery is caused by bacteria in the Shigella genus while amebic dysentery is caused by a common amoeba in genus Entamoeba. Shigella, targeting primates only, often resides in water or food that has been contaminated by feces and is then typically transmitted by the oral-fecal route. Dysentery is one of the most commonly mentioned diseases of the Pacific. For instance, Eric Bergerud noted that dysentery, in the South Pacific, was "extremely common 26 Anthony Chillemi, "GuadalcanalAugust 7, 1942 to December 9, 1942," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 26. Hereinafter Chillemi, Guadalcanal. 27 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 26. Guadalcanal's nicknames were either 'the Island' or 'the Canal.' 28 A basic concept of germ transfer. Also known as the orofecal or fecal-oral route. Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 26. 30 Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2006), 225. Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, 207-208. 129 among all the armies" and in general "dysentery is always one of the worst medical problems to plague an army."32 Like dengue fever, dysentery is not supported by the sick list, but this is not a problem. The words diarrhea and dysentery were, and still are, synonymous to most veterans and scholars. As Colonel Jim Donoghue recalled about the rise in diarrhea-related problems, "I'm not sure whether it was Dysentery or not," reflecting the prevailing uncertainty of what exactly was causing diarrhea. Alternatively, dysentery might have been grossly under-reported, in the same way that malaria suffers of 102°F and less were expected to function. Ralph Evans affirmed how dangerous his attack of dysentery was. "Early on, at Tulagi...I contract amoebic dysentery. I lost 40 pounds (from 160 down to 120) and came close to death. Flies from the dead Japanese soldiers carried the germ to our mess plates."34 Robert Shedd described his bout with dysentery. "As I remember, I often felt the urgent need to move my bowels. I would rush out behind a bush, drop my pants and have a very small movement, maybe a tablespoonful. Very soon the blow flies would be there as I would try to go some more. Then in a half hour or so it would happen all over again." Clifford Fox recollected his dysentery. "Once we were on an intelligence patrol toward the Matanikau River. On the way back, I passed out, it was so hot. I was brought to the sick bay, it was just a tent. I had dysentery so bad I was passing blood."36 This, however, was only the beginning of his misery. Fox continued "wouldn't you know we got these doggone air raids. I'd be out there over a slit trench, passing blood and these damn bombs were coming down. We lost a lot of weight, our shoes were rotted off. We looked a mess. We were very bad off and needed to be relieved. Dysentery and lack of decent food weakened us."37 Veteran Dallas Bennet claimed that part of the reason underwear was discarded, aside from the heat produced by too many layers, was that dysentery irreparably soiled garments: "skivvy drawers (shorts) having TO been discarded after the first attack [of dysentery]." 32 Bergerud, 98. 33 Jim Donoghue, Oral History Transcript, 1980, 124, Box 47, Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. 34 Ralph Evans, letter to author, May 2, 2005, 3. 35 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 1. 36 Clifford Fox in Bergerud, 98. 37 Clifford Fox in Bergerud, 98. 38 Dallas Bennet in Bergerud, 99. 130 For the Division on Guadalcanal it was the "[s]teaming heat, constant rain, and enemy activity [that] forced [a] lack of attention to personal hygiene."39 The hands used in feeding were the same hands used after defecation. Drinking water could not be spared as cleaning water. Rivers were dangerous with territorial crocodiles and the Japanese dead. Doctors and corpsmen had soap, but the men did not. The problem of cleaning hands had no immediate solution, and as a result microbes ran amok. Anthony Chillemi explained the soap situation for both Guadalcanal and New Britain. There was no PX [on either] the 'Canal and Gloucester. Soap was a luxury, if you brought it with you, as some did, you had to keep an eye on it. The Medical Companies had some brown soap and liquid soap for use in tents used for the injured and ill. In fact, in those tents that housed individuals with transmittable gastro-intestinal diseases there was always soap, water and alcohol to clean your hands.40 Soap was a valuable item, and something that had to be protected from theft. Cleanliness was as instinctive as it was prudent, and a lack of cleanliness proved costly. However, at least the latrine situation was efficient enough. Charles Frankel recalled that "It was either a straddle trench or a wide open outhouse with many seats. When the outhouses filled with waste, they were burned. Before the fire, the makeshift seats were removed to be used again."41 The problem was not the latrines, but the inability to wash hands after use. Cleaning was one problem, and getting dirty was another. The chances of becoming soiled were quite high, considering the rain, mud, diseases, and wounds that a Marine was likely to encounter. William Schwacha recorded being covered in dirt due to Japanese bomber runs late in September. Schwacha wrote that "suddenly I heard a sound I didn't want to hear, that was the bombs. I flattened out like a piece of paper, and on they came, the ground shook and heaved just like a rough sea, only this was a sea of dirt." He continued to record that "I stood up and dusted the dirt from my hair and face and slapping my pants drove it out of my pockets, I felt like a ground hog." 39 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 26. 40 Anthony Chillemi, Charles Frankel recalled that the men tried their best to remain clean, following cultural concepts taught to them by their parents. Even where poverty afflicted them in the Great Depression, the poor tend to use cleanliness as a counter-measure against a lack of quality in possession. Frankel alleged that on Guadalcanal they "tried to bathe at every opportunity that arose. After bathing our bodies, we washed our clothes and then put them on to dry as we had no other clothes to wear."44 Cleaning the body was prudent, but re-entering dirty clothes was problematic. No amount of hand scrubbing purged their khaki armor of sweated body salts and deep dirt. The lack of soap impacted clothing as well as the body. With dirtiness came odor, and Bob Stiles recalled his own socks after just three days of scouting. "Take the time I had come back from a three-day patrol in that cruddy jungle. I was beat down to my socks which, I may add, hadn't been washed in two weeks and smelled like skunk cabbage."45 The post-battle medical examination focused on clean socks as a weapon against jungle rot, noting that the lack of socks was "important in the incidence, progress, and treatment of this disease."46 At least drinking water never became a crisis. When time was afforded, various units from differing services set up mobile units that filtered and chlorinated water. The sites were placed beside rivers but at distances from each other that ensured all troops had close access to safe drinking water. The Division's main water supply, for most of the campaign, was on the west bank of the Lunga and by September 1 it could produce 24,000 to 30,000 gallons of water daily.47 This was an adequate amount of drinking water for every Ally on the island and more plants came ashore over time. Drinking water was mainly an issue during patrols, where treatment facilities were unavailable, or when a local source had not yet been developed in a certain segment of the perimeter. When facilities were unavailable, streams supplied natural water after Halazone tablets, in minutes, treated the water.48 Charles Frankel recounted that "water was scarce and we went on patrol to find a river that was clean. We thought 44 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 6. 45 Bob Stiles in Berry, 81. 46 Medical Experience, Phase IV, 3. 47 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex T: Medical," 1. 48 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 322. Stable chlorine and sodium. 132 we found one on one of our combat patrols. We filled all the canteens in our squad and when we left, we found some dead Japs lying in the river, about 75 yards away from where we filled our canteens."49 This problem was not entirely uncommon, as rivers and streams often marked the sharp end and several Japanese bodies were found in streams after firelights. Later crocodiles cleaned up. The oral-fecal route was probably contaminated more from the men's dirty hands while eating than from drinking. Dirty hands could infect food or water, but it was flies that were drawn food in particular (and feces). Drinking water was, after all, full of chlorine or iodine and was therefore not conducive to disease transmission. Food was also handled by hands where drinking water was typically not. While dirty hands and bodies factored into digestive-tract diseases, they also related to another major medical problem—the skin. Skin disorders were pervasive, abundant, and highly visible—meaning that everyone's eyes saw the affects of the microscopic on their own and their buddies' skin. As the Navy's medical history noted, the "effect of the tropical climate on skin diseases was a great importance" as they "usually spread rapidly and would not respond to ordinary methods of treatment."50 Before continuing, it is important to note an overarching medical disorder that most likely afflicted the skin, but that was not understood until after Guadalcanal, and so not itemized on the sick list. In early 1943, the Army discovered that the ingestion of Atabrine (quinacrine hydrochloride) over a long duration caused a new skin disorder, "hypertrophic lichen planus."51 Regular lichen planus is characterized as an "eruption of wide flat papules covered by a horny glazed film" and is "marked by intense itching."52 Hypertrophy refers to when tissue enlarges due to cell enlargement as opposed to cell manipulation ('normal' abnormal growth) and in this case simply means a particular powerful strand of a skin rash. The Navy's medical researchers had been monitoring statistics from the Army and their returning soldiers who were sick with dermatological disorders. Army medical personnel had "realized almost at once that they were seeing a unique eruption and that Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 6. History the Medical Department in World War II, 306. History the Medical Department in World War II, 313. Merriam- Webster's Medical Dictionary, 406. Papules are small elevations in the skin. 133 atabrine was the major factor in its production." Processing quinacrine hydrochloride, spread out over a several weeks and months, was at first not suspected. Army medical personnel suspected vitamin deficiency and then the environment as possible causes before settling on Atabrine. The proof came when reports from Army units in the Mediterranean and Burma noted the same skin disorder in correlation to Atabrine consumption. Later in the war reports came from the Philippines and Okinawa. By that time though, the name had changed from "New Guinea lichen planus" or "New Guinea Disease"54 to simply a stronger version of lichen planus. It is telling to note that at first medical personnel labeled the disorder after New Guinea—a hostile disease immediately associated with the hostile island. The importance of this is that hypertrophic lichen planus casts a small shadow over the skin disorders on the sick list, a disease that was not recorded but that must have been present at least after September (or after eight weeks of 'regular' atabrine consumption). What was technical for researchers and medical personnel was often just "jungle rot" to the men—an umbrella term for irritated skin, whether mild or serious. The sick list itemized five skin disorders: cellulitis (273 cases), dermatitis venenata (fifty-five), dermatitis (seventeen), fungus infection skin (forty-six), and impetigo contagiosa55 (thirty-three). These disorders were like malaria and diarrhea in the sense that 'everyone' had the problem at some point, but only the worst cases ever reached the sick list. Also, as admitted by the Navy's medical history, medical personnel were seldom "in the position to attempt to confirm their clinical diagnoses by microscopic examinations or cultures."56 Skin disorders totaled over 420 admissions and were particularly memorable due to their conspicuousness. Cellulitis' technical definition is "a bacterial infection of the deep layer of skin (dermis) and the layer of fat and soft tissues (subcutaneous) that lie underneath the skin. The infection can turn your skin red, swollen, and painful."57 As a secondary bacterial infection, cellulitis is History the Medical Department in World War II, 313. 54 History the Medical Department in World War 11,313. 55 The term contagiosa is no longer used and refers to contagiousness. 56 History the Medical Department in World War II, 304. 57 "Cellulitis," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, 8 September 2008, 58 "Bites, Insects," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, 5 August 2008, Oxford Medical Dictionary, 362. 66 History the Medical Department in World War II, 311. History the Medical Department in World War II, 304. 68 History the Medical Department in World War II, 305. 69 History the Medical Department in World War II, 305. 70 History the Medical Department in World War II, 306. 136 For the veterans, jungle rot was undoubtedly the single most important skin issue they faced. Conversely, the numbers and medical record downplay this disorder, saying that it only "assumed minor importance."71 Not easy to pin down, jungle rot has contradictory definitions. Where one basic definition states a "skin disorder induced by a tropical climate" another remarks "any of the various esp. [sic] pyogenic skin infections contracted in tropical environments."73 The word pyogenic means an infection of bacteria that generates pus,74 and a skin disorder with pus is quite different from one without. The two varying definitions above reflect the nebulousness of the vernacular term, a catch-all for the wide variety of skin disorders. The sick list seemed to suffer the same confusion, never using the term jungle rot. It is fair to surmise that Fungus Infection Skin was the professional medical equivalent of jungle rot, with the focus on fungus and not bacteria. Part of the problem was that diagnosis was by the doctor's eye, not the microscope—"Diagnosis was usually made on clinical grounds rather than on laboratory findings."75 Causal determinations were fairly simple, as the "most likely cause for this high incidence of fungus infection was the humidity and sweat that produced constant maceration and thus set up an ideal medium for the growth of the organisms."76 Jungle rot is perhaps best conceived of as athlete's foot, whereas the "various kinds of fungi that cause athlete's foot belong to a group called dermatophytes, which also cause jock itch. The fungi thrive in closed, warm, moist environments and feed on keratin, a protein found in hair, nails, and skin."77 Dermatophytes are fungi that "feed off other organisms to stay alive. Your feet provide a warm, dark and humid 71 Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase IV, "Annex B: Medical," 4. "Jungle Rot," Dictionary/Thesaurus, The Free Dictionary by Farlax, 2008, "Athlete's foot: Causes," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, September 2008. Again, these were ideal suggestions and even applicable to servicemen in the galleys and laundry rooms of vessels, but not in the conditions of the jungle. Robert Shedd recalled the treatment process for his jungle rot. "The Corpsmen doctored me with all sorts of gaudy colored medicine for my "jungle rot," spick itch, athlete's foot, whatever you want to call it, but to no avail. After I got home, I found out that I am allergic to wool."87 Back at boot camp both woolen and cotton socks were issued and, unfortunately for Shedd, the woolen socks only made matters worse. Donald Fall remembered having the Sulfanilamide applied to his jungle rot. "The Canal was a learning experience in all aspects of war. ...Jungle rot was one of these. My feet cracked on the soles to raw flesh. Thereafter I kept them with powder dirty or not."88 Charles Frankel noted that "I suffered from rot at the soles of my feet. The corpsman Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 26. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex B: Medical," 4. 86 History the Medical Department in World War II, 308-309. 87 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 1. 88 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 3. 139 put some medication on it and we had to allow it to dry and then, whenever the opportunity arose, we shed our shoes and socks and allowed our feet to dry in the air."89 Here the problems of the feet were reminiscent of the Great War's "trench foot." The obvious solution was to get one's feet out of the confines of boots (where airflow was non-existent and moisture abundant). On Guadalcanal this was as tricky as in European trenches decades earlier. Frankel described his jungle rot. "The Jungle rot was so severe to me that at times my soles would split open and bleed. It made it very difficult to walk in those conditions. Fortunately, the medication helped and it would clear up in a couple of days."90 Dean Winters in the 2nd Raider Battalion, during that unit's Long Patrol, concurred with Frankel that even walking was difficult when faced with painful jungle rot. He claimed that "[w]e had jungle rot on our crotch and down our legs so bad that we had to stop every once in a while to empty the blood out of our shoes. It was painful."91 Unfortunately, in a situation like a Raider patrol, stopping for hours at a time to dry feet was not plausible. Tolerance was the main coping mechanism. "When you're in the field like that, you go, and you can't worry about pain"92 concluded Winters. It seemed that elitism was, in part, based on the amount of elemental exposure the unit was willing to undertake. Robert Leckie believed that hardly anyone was free of jungle rot. "There were few of us whose legs and hands were not dappled with these red-and-white rosettes of pain; red with blood, white with pus and often ringed with the black of feeding flies."93 Open wounds, oozing with fluids, enticed flies which only helped the potential spread of disease. Some skin disorders were pustular and the pain from built-up pressure was recorded by Leckie when he remembered that if "the pus built up painful pressures... our corpsman, would draw a pitted, rusty scalpel from his kit and probe the wound."94 Irving Reynolds, a private with the 1st Raider Battalion, recalled that his jungle rot was so severe that he needed to be hospitalized, thus becoming one of the figures on the sick list. "I'd been in the field hospital with a damn fungus infection I picked up on the 89 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 7. 90 Charles Frankel, letter to author, April 11, 2005, 7. 91 Dean Winters in Patrick K. O'Donnell, Into the Rising Sun: In Their Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat (New York: The Free Press, 2003 [2002]), 60. 92 Dean Winters in O'Donnell, 60. 93 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 102. 94 Leckie, 116. 140 Tasimboko raid. ...But this damn fungus had gotten so bad I could hardly get a boondocker on, could hardly walk. I just had to turn in to sick bay.95 David Slater pointed out that his jungle rot, first encountered on Guadalcanal, stayed with him for the duration of the war. '"Jungle rot' was rife - practically everyone had some itch somewhere. I had a patch on my foot that wasn't healed until Summer of '45 when I was back Stateside. A close comrade had quarter-sized ulcers from ankles to knees."96 For Ralph Evans the jungle rot has left permanent scarring, present even after sixty years. "Jungle rot affected most of our men. It was seen mostly on the feet and lower legs. I caught it on the outside of my right wrist. I still have a scar from the hole it burrowed."97 Even General Vandegrift had to comment on the importance of healthy feet. He recorded in the final report that "[c]are of the feet, including daily foot inspection by junior officers, is particularly essential in jungle warfare. In one instance during this period one battalion had 159 ineffectives due to minor and entirely avoidable foot ailments." To be made ineffective meant that these 159 individuals were not suffering "minor" ailments. Compare those ineffectives to the 108 Marines casualties from the combat with the Ichiki Detachment on August 14 at Alligator Creek,99 the 144 casualties from the Battle of Bloody Ridge against the Kawaguchi Brigade,100 and another 300 casualties when General Maruyama's forces, 7000 strong, slammed into the ridge on October 25.101 That the problem of "ineffectives" due to poor foot health was "entirely avoidable" (in General Vandegrift's judgment) ignored just how powerful this environmental adversity was on the individual man. For instance, it was a basic rule not to remove one's footwear, even while sleeping. The Japanese propensity for Irving Reynolds in Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 119. 96 David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2006, 3. 97 Ralph Evans, letter to author, May 2, 2005, 3. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation," 7, July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. "This phase" meaning after September 19. 99 Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Random house, 1990), 156. 10 George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), 79-81. 1 Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Marines In World War II Commemorative Series; First Offensive: The Marine Campaign For Guadalcanal (Washington: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1992), 38. 141 night incursions only heightened the need to keep footwear on. Avoiding jungle rot was near-impossible under the combined conditions of combat and constant wetness though. Jungle rot was a result of environment and the only sure solution was removal from those conditions. The Army's medical history of the Pacific War blamed jungle rot on the lack of cleanliness among the troops. It noted that in "the hills, water was in short supply and the troops went unbathed for weeks at a time. Dirt plus heat, high humidity, and filthy clothing promoted fungus infections of the skin."102 Bergerud noted that "the men who made war in the South Pacific in one way or another were never truly dry or clean."103 The post-battle medical examination attributed jungle rot to a lack of personal hygiene and the "loss of clothing."104 New recruits were issued several sets of clothing in boot camp, but once the heat of the South Pacific was felt, typically only their khaki set was worn. Veterans have noted that dirty clothing, not lost clothing, was the problem. Yet the post-battle medical examination's statement makes sense when considering that changes of clothing would have helped against jungle rot and since the Marines donned only one set of clothing, the others were assumed to be lost. Aside from disorders of the blood, digestive-tract, and skin, many Marines found themselves with disconcerting coughs, inflamed throats, and infections of the head. The remaining environmentally-based diseases breakdown as catarrhal fever (371), acute tonsillitis (177), acute otitis media (thirty), lymphangitis (nineteen), mumps (seventeen), peritonsillar abscess (thirteen), acute bronchitis (twelve), acute pharyngitis (twelve), and acute, non-venereal epididymitis (ten). Contemporaries conceptualized "catarrh" as a fever, deriving from something foreign. Today, scientists define catarrh as "the excessive build-up of mucus in one of the airways, or cavities, of the body." °5 However, it is recognized that catarrh, for most people, is connected to the "blockage of the nasal cavities."106 Scientists note that 102 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 125. 103 Bergerud, 68. 104 Medical Experience, Phase IV, 3. 105 "Catarrh," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, 17 June 2008, Oxford Medical Dictionary, 118. 108 "Catarrh," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, 17 June 2008, 123 Oxford Medical Dictionary, 466. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase I, "Annex M: Medical," 2. 125 Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, 228, and Oxford Medical Dictionary, 245. 12 Oxford Medical Dictionary, 245. 127 "Epididymitis," Medical Dictionary, The Free Dictionary by Farlax, 2008, Non-Environmental Agency ~ Non-environmental agents divide into several categories: endogenous disorders, battle casualties, and mental disorders. There were thirteen cases of gonococcus infections in the urethra,128 concentrated early on. Although caused by bacterium, sexually-transmitted diseases cannot be blamed on the environment. Most cases, seven, matured in September, with four reported in August. There were no cases in December and only one recorded for October and one again for November. Similar to gonorrhea was syphilis, a contagious bacterial infection that irritates the skin if not treated. It is typically passed through sexual contact, but it is possible for syphilis to be transmitted by blood transfusion, intravenous needle use, and from mother to infant. Plasma from the US had been cleaned, so syphilis from that source was unlikely. An emergency blood transfusion might have passed it on, but it was simply more likely that the ten cases of syphilis were contracted from sex. The final report took pride in its low numbers of venereal diseases. The first echelon had been in Wellington one month by the time of departure for Fiji, and "only twelve cases of venereal disease had been reported and they were left with the rear action."130 The lack of civilization appears to equate to a lack of venereal diseases. There were twenty-two cases of lymphadenitis, concentrated in the first half of the campaign. The lymphatic system is part of the circulatory system, and performs several functions. Primary of these include immune response, rescuing lost "fluids and proteins that have escaped from cells and tissues," and cleaning up foreign material in the blood. Distributed along the lymphatic vessels are small nodes, appropriately named lymph nodes, that "filter the flow of lymph passing through the node."132 An inflammation of these nodes is know as lymphadenitis, and typically occurs in the front of the neck in association with the tonsils. Lymphadenitis can cause the lymph nodes to Gonococcus is defined as "a pus-producing bacterium of the genus Neisseria (N. gonorrhoeae) that causes gonorrhea" {Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, 290). Gonorrhea is the inflammation of the mucus membrane of the genitals, and is a sexually-transmitted disease. 129 "Syphilis," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, June 2008, "become swollen, painful, and tender" and can be casually exogenous or endogenous to the body.133 For instance, "[ljymphadenitis occurs when the glands become overwhelmed by bacteria, virus, fungi, cancer cells, or inflammation. The swollen glands are usually found near the site of an underlying infection, tumor, or inflammation."134 The US Navy listed lymphadenitis as a venereal disease, so although it could be resultant of something non-sexual, it probably was not. Concentrated in October, there were twelve cases of calculus in the urinary system; or, "passing a stone" in vernacular. There were twenty-one cases of inflamed teratoma cysts. Teratomas are tumors "composed of a number of tissues that are not usually found at the site and are derived from all three embryonic germ layers."135 Teratomas are typically found in testis and ovary, and more specifically "[mjalignant teratoma [cancer] of the testis is found in young men."136 Flat-foot witnessed twelve cases. Scientifically known as pes planus, flat-foot refers to when the instep arch makes 1 "^7 contact with the ground in a way that it normally would not. Walking becomes painful, and nothing is more basic to infantry than foot traffic. Another twenty men suffered hemorrhoids on Guadalcanal. Defined as "a mass of dilated veins in swollen tissue at the margin of the anus or nearby within the rectum,"138 and known to be quite painful, one can imagine the misery a hemorrhoid sufferer felt when also experiencing diarrhea. Along the same vein, thirty-four men were reported to have inguinal hernias. A hernia, in general, is when an organ exceeds its particular body cavity. Inguinal refers to a rupture. In an inguinal hernia "a sac of peritoneum, containing fat or part of the bowel, bulges through a weak part (inguinal canal) of the abdominal wall."14 This usually means that the intestines are poking "through your lower abdomen."141 This is the common hernia, and for comparison, the British National Health Service noted that 133 Oxford Medical Dictionary, 421. "Lymphadenitis," ADAM Health Encyclopedia, Net Wellness, June 2007, "every year in England, 70,000 surgical operations are required to repair inguinal hernias."142 Furthermore, 98% of those cases occurred in men.143 Surgery is often the best option and these Marines would have been evacuated. There were fourteen cases of ingrown toenails recorded, mostly concentrated later on in the campaign. Ingrown toenails result in the inflammation of a toe when the sides of its nail grows "into the skin instead of over it."144 The problem happens when nails are cut too short, footwear is too tight, or if the toe has been stubbed; and it can be quite painful if left untreated. However, the danger lies in the spread of infection resultant of the pierced skin. The potential for an ingrown nail was increased by the hygienic and environmental conditions of Guadalcanal, but the cause of the problem was most likely not environmental. If this disorder was conceptualized as 'a secondary infection resultant of ingrown toenail' then it would be attributable to the environment. However, the diagnosis was made by inflammation, and so infection might not yet have even occurred. Battle casualties tell a basic story about the combat between the Marines and Japanese, and breakdown as such: 1472 men had received fatal and non-fatal gunshot wounds, 241 men were killed in action with causes not known, recorded chest compressions were performed on ninety-two men, another fifty-one men had lacerated wounds, another thirty-three had serious burns, thirty men had serious contusions (bruises), twenty-three men suffered intracranial injuries, another eighteen men had puncture wounds, and, lastly, there were thirteen miscellaneous cases. All these injuries totalled 1973 individuals, or just under 19% of all casualties. Combat on Guadalcanal was episodic but fierce, with the big Japanese pushes being the pinnacles. With gunshots wounds (as opposed to shell wounds) taking up the lion's share of injuries, and leading all environmental agents taken individually except malaria, the up-close nature of combat in the jungle is revealed. As mentioned, the rugged terrain and near- impenetrable flora limited vehicular traffic and the movement of large machines. With 142 "Hernia," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, September 2008, artillery and mortar fire stunted in the South Pacific, usually by dense overhead foliage and canopies, and tanks held back by ground obstacles, a proliferation of gunshot wounds was no surprise. An exploration of the diagnosis and treatment of the various psychoneuroses is beyond the scope of this work. However, the numbers were appreciable and make up an important part of the sick list. Psychoneurosis (war neurosis) claimed 131 cases, psychoneurosis (hysteria) had fifty-eight cases, psychoneurosis (situational) resulted in seventeen cases, and shock produced eleven cases. These psychosomatic disorders were most likely influenced by environmental factors, but were ultimately endogenous to the individual. These were likely stress reactions and attributable to combat conditions or suffering sustained ordnance fire. Some environmental conditions did 'fray the nerves' and should not be extricated when considering psychoneuroses. As previously stated, the "profound jungle darkness" and the "unnerving nights sounds of animals and birds" were believed to be two key factors in the creation of neuropsychiatric cases.145 Over three years later on Okinawa, the diagnosis and understanding of these mental disorders had developed and matured into a systematic practice of recognition and treatment. But back on Guadalcanal most practices were in their infancy. Ultimately, by admission of the Navy's medical history, the Division had an "excellent" experience with these disorders on Guadalcanal.146 This interpretation was based on the pleasant surprise that the number of cases was manageable and that most cases did not mean a loss of manpower. If the neurosis was not severe, the individual was put on a labor detail. Typically, this freed up a man in that labor unit to transfer to combat duty. This process worked for about seventy-five men, out of the 217 cases of the psychoneuroses and shock cases147 and could be done because every Marine was a rifleman first. In retrospect, despite how fierce battle became, the Americans were on the defensive and the Division was spared the tremendous offensive grinds on Peleliu and Okinawa. The episodic nature of the big Japanese pushes on Guadalcanal also gave the Marines significant time periods without combat. Of course, environmental adversities were still present, but one enemy was better than two. 145 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 125. 146 History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 25. 147 History of the Medical Department in World War II, Volume 1, unpublished, 25. 149 Suffering Japanese bombardment was probably at the heart of the psychoneuroses cases. Robert Leckie had simply noted, of the Japanese bombardments, 148 that "[t]hey were still whittling us." His fear of planes had become acute. Leckie wrote that after a few weeks on Guadalcanal, "we had now such a well-developed fear of airplanes that we would not come above ground so long as the bombers lingered or the shrapnel of anti-aircraft bursts kept falling."149 Veteran Norris Byron of the 11th Marines asserted to Henry Berry, "[a]nd let me tell you, it was pure horseshit. Torture. A guy could lose his marbles. The first time I went through this shelling was murder."150 He continued by mentioning that, oddly, "I knew guys who were actually hurt by being hit by parts of their buddies' bodies."151 William Schwacha's diary foreshadowed veteran and author James Jones' famous 1960s work on the Army's experience of Guadalcanal during the mop-up operations (December to February). Schwacha wrote of the madness of Guadalcanal. "A buddie of mine cracked up the other day during a shelling, he started crying and shaking, is it any wonder why men hate war, that makes two buddies to go like that, cry like little children.... Everyone's nerves are at the breaking point...." William Hawkins had said that "[n]aval shelling can be fearsome, particularly if you have nowhere to go. Add to their shelling the fact that the malarial mosquitoes were appearing in droves and so was the jungle crud, and you can imagine what our nights were like."153 By early October the sporadic Japanese bombardments, from both air and sea, was having its toll. On October 1st, 1942, Schwacha recorded that "[w]e all wonder when we will leave this mad Island. Men have already lost their minds, is it any wonder. Bombs and shells dropping and seeing men die, or dead? I am feeling nervous during these raids."154 By mid-October Schwacha's diary exhibited an increased sense of powerlessness. "They [Marines] go crazy, they had better send relief, men who are fresh, or else those who have already died, will have died in vain. It's the truth, for no longer can we stand the sound of bombs, feel the earth shake, or hear shells bursting 148 Leckie, 106. 149 Leckie, 103. 150 Norris Byron in Berry, 357. 151 Norris Byron in Berry, 357. 152 Schwacha, 44. 153 William Hawkins in Berry, 48. 154 Schwacha, 65. 150 sending bits of hot metal everywhere, something has to be done or all will be lost."155 It is from these accounts, then, that the 217 cases of psychoneuroses and shock can be understood. By listing them as diseases, and not injuries, the official line was somewhat unsympathetic, implying that the disorders were not a product of the Japanese, but a product of the individual man. hi reality, though, it was the compassion of many men who helped these cases return, or prevent them in the first place. Anthony Chillemi admitted that "I found that tending to these kids (I was only 19 myself) helped me survive. There is one benefit derived in caring for others: you tend to forget you own misery."156 Undetermined Agency ~ Last, there were several items that might or might not have been a product of environmental agency. There was a miscellany of disorders that individually totaled fewer then ten admissions each. However, the catch-all "All Other Causes" equaled a not insignificant 314 cases. There were an additional eighty-one cases of "Diagnosis Undetermined," another category of assorted diseases and perhaps injuries. On the patient's information card, medical personnel marked their assumption, like a "fracture, skull." The item "No Disease (Mental Observation)" had ten cases. These specific cases were for men who were not sick, but for some reason were temporarily under the jurisdiction of the medical staff. There were also thirty-six cases of unclassified abscesses, probably caused by parasitic organisms, but not known for certain. There were twelve cases of bursitis recorded. To reduce friction joints often have "fluid-filled sacs" called bursa.157 Bursitis is when this sac becomes infected, typically as a result of "repetitive slight injury, pressure, or friction or from infection or inflammatory conditions." Hundreds of jobs present in an infantry division accounted for what today is called repetitive stress disorder or repetitive strain injury. The inflammation of the bursa was probably from a repetitive joint motion, but some of the cases could have been caused by parasitic organisms (particularly bacteria). 155 Schwacha, 85. 156 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 29. 157 "Bursitis," Health Encyclopaedia, NHS Direct, April 2008, The appendix, that small "tube of tissue that extends from the large intestine,"159 is the organ of mystery, its function still unclear. The inflammation of this organ results in appendicitis. Treatment meant immediate evacuation unless the emergency was dire. There were seventeen cases of appendicitis, and the causes could have been triggered by environmental or, conversely, endogenous factors. Chronic appendicitis is a term no longer used, and is now believed to be a psychosomatic disorder, as it "was a popular diagnosis 20-50 years ago to explain recurrent pains in the lower abdomen. It is rare, and appendicectomy will not usually cure such pains."160 The causes of the sixteen cases of chronic appendicitis are undeterminable within the limits of the sick list and were probably just common pains of the lower abdomen. Guadalcanal was the baptism of fire for not just the 1st Marine Division, but for all the US armed forces engaged in the Pacific counter-offensive. However, this was no guarantee that lessons were learned beyond the unit; the US armed services often suffered intra-service hubris as much as inter-service rivalry. Referring to the Army's 43rd Division and the Marine Corps' 1st Raider Regiment during the Battle of New Georgia, Albert Cowdrey asserted that the "job of conquering the Japanese-held Solomons was begun so poorly, from a logistical and medical standpoint, that Guadalcanal might never have happened."161 Amid a myriad of serious medical problems, Cowdrey stressed that only "one small navy malaria control unit" was given the task of shielding the 3000 Raiders and Seabees plus 25,000 Soldiers.162 Of all [wounded] American troops on New Georgia, 27% were wounded by the Japanese, 62% by a disease.163 Perhaps it was not so much that lessons were not learned, but that a proper appreciation of environmental adversities took time. As Cowdrey concluded, "[New Georgia] compelled the South Pacific Area command—as Guadalcanal apparently had not—to take the medical requirements of jungle warfare seriously."164 New Georgia was another continental island in the Solomon Islands and the lessons learned there cemented what was under-appreciated for Guadalcanal. 159 "Digestive Diseases: Appendicitis," Health A-Z, WebMD, March 2006, However, some lessons were learned, particularly for the 3r Marine Division engaging its first battle on Bougainville, the largest of the continental islands in the Solomon Islands. Having a stronger organizational connection to a fellow Marine division, and being led by General Vandegrift, the 3rd Marine Division was a quick study and suffered little from malaria. As the official operational history described, "[d]isease incidence was low [for the 3r Marine Division], except for malaria which had already been contracted elsewhere."165 The key laid in pioneering and engineering work, favorable manipulation of the land for humans, unfavorable for mosquitoes. "The construction work on the airfields and roads resulted in the draining of many adjacent swamps which aided the malaria control"166 concluded the official history. Amazingly, just months after the malarial havoc of Guadalcanal, for the 3rd Marine Division there "were no cases of malaria which could be traced to local infection, and dysentery and diarrhea were practically nonexistent-a rare testimonial to the sanitary regulations observed from the start of the operation." Preventive measures prudently put in place, as "[ljectures and demonstrations which stressed the value of clothing, repellents, bug spray, and head and mosquito nets, were part of the pre-operation training. Their effect and the discipline of the Marines is reflected in the fact that few men were evacuated because of illness."168 It appeared some lessons were being learnt after all— primarily, that environmental adversities directly affected operations. Disease did not kill like combat. However, it created a similar effect by creating ineffective Marines en masse. The environment's microscopic front managed to deplete the vitality of young, generally healthy men who had passed physical examinations and undergone physical training. In fact, if a man had made it overseas, he was already considered among the healthiest, as "personnel not physically fit...were declared unfit for foreign duty."169 Modern medicine challenged parasitic organisms and ultimately AH citations in paragraph form Henry I. Shaw, Jr. and Douglas T. Kane, History of the U.S. Marine Corps Operations in War II, Volume II: Isolation ofRabaul (FMFRP 12-34, Doctrine Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, VA: 2000 [1963]), 289. Hereinafter Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul. 1 Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 289. 167 Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 289. 168 Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 289. Medical Experience and Problems in the Guadalcanal Operation, Phase I, June 26 to August 7, 1942, no author, no date, 1, Box 7, Folder 33, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. "Not physically fit" typically meant for venereal diseases, 153 changed the medical discourse of warfare by negating the killing power of disease. Since US troops had access to evacuation, were given inoculations, had daily access to the most advanced pharmaceuticals, had regular contact with professional doctors and trained medical personnel, they were not likely to die from these otherwise potentially lethal organisms. Conversely, when Japanese troops were lost in the jungles of Guadalcanal, they died in the thousands due to disease and other conditions. Disease, for them, did kill. However, death was not the only measure of importance. Disease sapped the strength of the 1st Marine Division and made the unit unfit for combat after sixteen weeks of campaigning on Guadalcanal. That the Japanese were unable to take advantage of the malarial-ravaged Marine division did not negate the importance of disease on the functionality of the unit. Disease was still performing attrition at a steady rate that handicapped the Division from performing how it wanted to and although their mission was successful, they were kept from finishing the campaign. For the men themselves, their encounters on the microscopic front were defined by either suffering or watching a friend suffer exotic maladies. They survived these microscopic environmental adversities, but those factors were still essential to the experience. The influence of the microscopic front, the war with parasitic organism, was felt everyday by both the men and the Division. hospitalization, and was also used as a catch-all categorization of "not physically equipped for tropical duty" (1) which probably referred to the palest of whites. 154 Chapter Six The Reduction: Primordial New Britain The 'reduction of Rabaul' has become a common place reference for the US neutralization by early 1944 of that once-great bastion. The word reduction, when viewed in the light of environmental adversity, refers here to the men's state of existence while submerged in the primordial rainforests of New Britain. The environmental conditions on New Britain were so basic that the men suffered a narrowed scope of existence in which elemental pursuits dominated thought and action. In this sense, while Rabaul was continually being reduced by the Fifth Air Force (42- 43), the men of the 1st Marine Division were themselves reduced by the environment. While civilization was non-existent, the alien landscape, the harsh meteorological conditions, the microscopic front, and other biotic relationships fully dominated the men. But before landing on New Britain, the 1st Marine Division had to recuperate from the ordeal of Guadalcanal. Their first attempt at a break was in northern Australia. However, when Brisbane proved too malarious, the Division headed southwards to Melbourne. While in southern Victoria, the Division had it most pleasant experience of the war—re-immersion into accustomed civilization—the opposite of the hostile environment. Retraining in Australia lasted from January to August 1943. When the regiments sailed north, landing at various points in eastern New Guinea, the tempo of retraining increased until the Division reunited slightly before the invasion of Cape Gloucester, New Britain. New Britain was the Division's second battle in the Pacific War, and last of its time in the South Pacific. Prelude: Brisbane, Melbourne, Papua, and North-East New Guinea ~ Unfortunately for the 11th Marines, the Army still needed their artillery expertise for mop-up operations in the northwest quadrant of Guadalcanal (until February). The rest of the Division, however, sailed to Australia in mid-December 1942. The outskirts of Brisbane, residing in the eastern province of Queensland, played temporary host to the sickly Division. Although over 1400 miles to Port Moresby in Papua, Brisbane had seen its share of the war. Allied service men had, by December 155 1942 and January 1943, worn out their welcome. Australia had been at war with Germany since 1939 and US service-men poured into the city starting in early 1942, triggering war-weariness. It did not help that General MacArthur's offices were in Brisbane. William Schwacha's diary recorded his first impressions of the city proper: "Dec. 18: Bad food, cool people. I have been in Brisbane three times, and found it a cool town towards service men. .. .These people are far from those of New Zealand, friends are hard to find here."1 To be fair, Schwacha admitted an American deficiency in playing guest. "Fighting has been going on nightly, Aussies, our Army, Navy and Marines, hit it up, so that alone spoils our welcome which to start with wasn't cheerie."2 In addition, southeastern Queensland was susceptible to malaria outbreaks. Plasmodium had not given up torturing the 1st Marine Division. For Bob Stiles the persistency was grating. "All that crap I went through on the Island—I never got malaria. Guys are getting it all around me, but not Stiles. But, when we first arrived in Australia, they sent us to Brisbane which also had those damn malaria bugs. I not only got malaria but also yellow jaundice. I was sick as a dog."3 Anthony Chillemi implied disappointment with the conditions of the camp near Brisbane when he reflected that the "surroundings weren't much better than the place we had just left. The tent area was in a stand of tangled bush and strange trees very much resembling a jungle. The only real difference were the paved roads from one site to another site. Much to our dismay we learned the camp was miles from Brisbane itself."4 Warner Pyne was equally unimpressed with his new living conditions. "We landed at a designated camp near Brisbane. And guess who was waiting for us? Our old friend, the malaria mosquito. These pests started arriving in the thousands."5 He continued by explaining the colloquial understanding of how mosquitoes without malaria might become infected by malaria-sick humans. "They'd bite the men who were still infected, then go to a Marine 1 William Schwacha, untitled diary (copy sent to author by Robert Shedd, March 6, 2006), 127- 128. Pagination by Robert Shedd. 2 Schwacha, 128. 3 Bob Stiles in Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 85. 4 Anthony Chillemi, "GuadalcanalAugust 7, 1942 to December 9, 1942," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 42. Hereinafter Chillemi, Guadalcanal. 5 Warner Pyne in Berry, 68. 156 who'd gotten over the bug for their next meal. The next thing you knew our sick bays were overflowing."6 Schwacha recorded the setting of the new camp, concluding on a positive note. "Our camp is 37 miles from Brisbane out in the rolling hills, far from any town, we live in tents surrounded by woods, not like woods in America, but rather small second grade trees. All kinds of wild birds singing, and beetles buzzing throughout the mild days. I 7 N like it here." Schwacha had adopted a positive perspective on his new surroundings and living conditions. Outside of a combat zone, animals and insects seemed less malevolent. Schwacha also recalled some of the more foreign wildlife around camp. "Dec. 18, 1942: "We have been here in our new camp four days now, the nights are cold with animals prowling about [like] wombats, baby kangaroos, jackass birds o squawking all the time." However, initial impressions were often misleading. Brisbane's climate was proving inadequate for convalescence. Rainfall returned as an old enemy, since the beginning of the new year was also the middle of the rainy season. Schwacha recorded "January 1, 1943: "We live in tents without lights, rain is so heavy that it runs straight through it, cannot stop this stream. Our gear gets pretty damp at times from this repeated wetting. It hasn't a chance to dry. .. .None of us boys like this place, but it is better than the Island, here no shellings or bombings take place, only for that are we glad."9 January is Brisbane's rainiest month with 6.3 inches of average rainfall (45.3 inches per year).10 With the resurgence in malaria, the entire point of convalescing was compromised. Somewhere other than Brisbane's uncultivated outskirts needed to be chosen. So, the 1st Marine Division left for Melbourne, in the south of Australia, arriving on January 12, 1943.n Finally, Plasmodium parasites were not able to prosper and the Anopheles could not follow, although there was an estimated 7500 malaria 6 Warner Pyne in Berry, 68. 7 Schwacha, 127. 8 Schwacha, 127. 9 Schwacha, 129. 10 "Average Rainfall," Brisbane Regional Office, Australia, World Climate, 2008, 1 ^ were back in." General Davis continued to note that the issue became that the Division seldom received replacements because its official strength was always full (although entire battalions were being hospitalized). This equated to a longer stay in Australia than what was expected, as they thought they would "get back in the war in a matter of a few weeks." What Melbourne offered the unit was a chance to recover from malaria, but not a guarantee. Once malaria had finally receded, the Division had its solace and could re train. Melbourne was certainly gentler than Brisbane. For instance, compared to Brisbane's 45.3 inches of average rainfall per year, Melbourne experiences only 22.4 inches a year,14 plus the cooler average maximum temperate of 66.9°F in contrast to Brisbane's slightly hotter 77.7°F.15 However, the summer months aggravated the malaria problem. Melbourne hosted two regiments while its western neighbor, Ballarat, about sixty miles away, housed the 5th Marines and 11th Marines at Mount Martha. What stood out was the men's reception in Melbourne. If Brisbane was cold, the citizens of Melbourne were notably warm. The immersion into accustomed civilization finally allowed the men to recuperate, both physically and mentally. Plasmodium faded, jungle rot started to clear, bowels were less active. The city acted as a barrier to wildlife while flora was contained in human-imposed order. Local food was different from the various American cuisines, but not difficult to get accustomed to, as was alcohol. There were obvious cultural differences between Australians and Americans and this gave the men something to Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 307. 13 Raymond Davis, Oral History Transcript, 1977, 124, Box 42, Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division, and for next citation. 14 "Average Rainfall," Melbourne Airport, Australia, World Climate, 2008, At least watching aquatic life was mildly entertaining. Johnston wrote that "[o]ne thing that broke the monotony was sighting a group of whales that came near our ship. We watched them cavorting for several hours."19 However, Johnston's memory about the trip was anchored in tedium and temperature. He noted that "it was a long, hot two- thousand-mile ocean voyage" that was "boring, and there were no fresh-water baths." The regiments of the Division settled in different parts of the northern New Guinean coastline until the Division unified in early November at forward bases closer to the Huon Peninsula. Anthony Chillemi's first impressions of New Guinea revolved around the weather and environment. He wrote "New Guinea's climate wasn't too hospitable. As a matter of fact, if you lived in a tent as we did, the climate was a misery Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 307. Movement orders were issued on August 31, 1943. 17 James W. Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2000 [1998]), 35. 18 Johnston, 36. The litter from vessels traversing the Pacific probably enticed predatory aquatic life to follow. 19 Johnston, 36. 159 to contend with." What defined misery were two old enemies: rain and humidity. "Even the evenings seemed hot, and moisture in the form of rain and humidity didn't offer any respite." However, this was the important beginning to re-acclimatization; the Australian dream was over, but "most of us regained some of the tolerance needed to withstand the climate." In terms of rainfall, Guadalcanal was bad, but New Guinea was worse, with several "parts of Papua's 90,540 square miles received 150 to 300 inches of rain a year, 8 to 10 inches a day during the monsoon season from November to March."21 Milne Bay, at the extreme end of the Owen Stanley mountain range in Papua, was the 5th Marines first in-country retraining site.22 Robert Shedd's first impressions included the presence of tents, a sure sign of the Army. "Rows of pyramidal tents had been set up for us in the jungle. With the rain, the paths to our tents became muddy."23 Aside from mud, their new bivouac was dominated by coconuts. "Now, you must understand that all around us were coconut trees, abundant in that part of the islands, and the coconuts themselves were everywhere underfoot, constantly in the way," wrote Jim Johnston. Being close to the Army also meant ambitious Marines had a chance to increase their material possessions, so valued in the wild of the rainforest. Now a Marine infantry company had one Jeep. This was for the captain's use. We soon found out that the Army guys would go to the movies and leave the keys in the ignition. Soon A Company had several jeeps and two huge dump trucks. We would drive the trucks to the coral pit where a power shovel would load it up. We soon had nice coral paths from our tents to the mess hall or tent. I guess we had something like a mess tent. It has been said that after we left there was a scurry to get our area. Jim Johnston wrote about his first impressions of New Guinea, as seen from aboard a ship in Milne Bay. "When we finally got to New Guinea, it looked great from the ship, green and beautiful. We landed without incident at Milne Bay and spent the next few days setting up a temporary base from which we would conduct operations. We began Anthony Chillemi, "Cape Gloucester, New BritainDecember 26, 1943 to Late-February 1944," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 2, and next two citations. Hereinafter Chillemi, New Britain. 21 Condon-Rail and Cowdrey, 128. 22 Some units had spent some time at Goodenough Island. 23 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 2. 24 Johnston, 42. 25 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 2. 160 the routine of our schedule, sending out company- and battalion-size patrols into the hills." Retraining had begun in southern Australia but re-acclimatization required a tropical rainforest. Chances for combat in this part of New Guinea were rare, but training offered its own interaction with the foreign rainforest. Robert Shedd wrote of some local biota (living organisms), "here we found different kinds of snakes, some as long as ten feet. Insects were also large. In the US we see walking sticks maybe 3 inches long. There we saw them 8 or 10 inches. Butterflies were gorgeous.27 William Kapp recorded short entries around the time of arriving at Milne Bay. "Oct. 8 Milne Bay, New Guinea. Army Band on dock to meet us. Our camp to be built in jungle— swampy jungle." Unfortunately, the rain reappeared. "Oct 9. Took all day to dry things out after the rain. Began to clean things up. Gad, what a hole." But, hopefully, a post exchange tent would bring some civilization to the rainforest. "Oct. 12 Inspection of area—don't know why—it is still a damn swamp. Working on a PX in evening."28 Sadly, the rain ruined the post exchange tent. "Oct. 14 Worked on PX which is under water."29 Henry Paustian described the Milne Bay area, which "lay at the eastern tip of the Owen Stanley Range. These mountains were very steep with knifelike ridges running along the crests. They were covered with lush rain forest. Open areas had kunai grass. There were numerous fast flowing streams and waterfalls." Henry Paustian's reminiscence, decades later, observed that the small part of Papua he experienced was ultimately beautiful. Adversities were only such when contextualized as such (as in the context of war). Paustian remember that "New Guinea and its Owen Stanley range with sharp knifelike ridges and green Kunai grass that gave a soft velvety T 1 appearance, was, in hindsight, beautiful." Robert Shedd remembered training in the rugged terrain of the Huon Peninsula. "The Army said the mountains were out of bounds for training, but not the Marines. Someone had found a way up a stream to high in those mountains. We were up there 26 Johnston, 37. 27 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 2. "Walking sticks" refers to insects of the order Phasmatodea. 28 William Kapp, Bill Kapp's War Notes and Memories (sent to author on February 24, 2006 by W. Kapp's daughter Susan K. Anderson), 13, and for preceding two citations. 29 Kapp, 14. 30 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 6. 31 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 4. 161 one time over night. As we wrapped up in our ponchos, we could hear things crawling around in the brush. Some said they were large snakes."32 No snakes were spotted but a serious accident stuck in Shedd's memory. "Anyhow, one man fell down a cliff and injured his spine. It was necessary to leave him there with some buddies and doctor him there. However, he didn't live long. I was one of a group of volunteers to go up and bring him back for burial. After that the Marines did their training in more hospitable places." Training needed to be realistic, but the hostile environment made training more dangerous than North Carolina. William Kapp's diary entry appeared to confirm the falling accident. Kapp recorded: "Oct. 28 Pearson falls over cliff and is killed." Years later he added that "we arrived at a slippery river crossing and tried to cross it but Pearson fell and landed on his head. We brought his body back."34 Training too, like combat, improved with time and experience. Jim Johnston reflected that they "were there to keep an eye on the place and, primarily, to prepare for invasions farther north. In doing so, we learned about the hard work of jungle patrols."35 No one failed to notice the impressively rugged terrain of eastern Papua. Jim Johnston wrote years later that the rainforest was misleading from a distance. "What had appeared green and beautiful from the ship was pretty much an ugly mass when we got ashore. The terrain was rugged, with hills that were steep and high, covered with large boulders or muddy jungle."36 Training centered on patrolling, the main pillar of jungle warfare. Johnston described typical training patrols, noting that the men "made several combat patrols, fully loaded and prepared, that were physically tortuous. Wading across the torrents of mountain streams while carrying a load that was extremely awkward and heavy, we learned to look out for crocodiles and snakes."37 William Kapp's contemporary notes bring to life the experience of Papua's rainforest. "Oct. 27 Begin three day problem through hills. Rough on me as I am weak on account of shits. Rain hard."38 However, 32 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 2. 33 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 2. 34 Kapp, 15. 35 Johnston, 37. For those new to the Division after Guadalcanal, New Guinea was their first time in a tropical rainforest. 36 Johnston, 37. 37 Johnston, 37. 38 Kapp, 15. 162 the training was good, and even went so far as to consider emergency isolation of a small unit. "Oct. 29 Had hike up river to the falls for nature study on edible fruits, nuts, and plants."39 Physical conditioning appeared elusive though. "Nov. 16 Early reveille. Began hike around bay to swamp. I crapped out because of heat and got a ride back to camp."40 Army trucks were used for training purposes but were only a temporary relief as the men had no access to them on New Britain. "Nov. 20 Rode trucks back to camp. We are all so tired that camp looks good and a sack will feel good."41 The camp that Kapp had called a "damn swamp" now seemed nice when compared to the rainforest. As Kapp's notes revealed, physical conditioning was still difficult to achieve. "Dec. 2 Began 15 miles hike in a.m. Tired as hell when we get back. Heat is terrible on the move."42 Jim Johnston also wrote about these training patrols. "Our patrols would each last several days and nights. We would move during the daylight hours, and at night we would set up perimeter defenses to protect ourselves against any surprises. When a patrol was finished and we returned to our base camp, we were given some time off to clean our gear and write letters, or whatever else we could find to do."43 Colonel John Leonard, Jr. recalled decades later that training was highly problematic and not really effective. He recalled that "training in New Guinea was an impossibility. All we were doing was just getting our equipment and stuff ready. You had no training. You couldn't even move around. I mean, it was just a great, big, swamp mudhole."44 Just getting their equipment ready "was a major effort." Veteran Melvin Cruthers recalled his time at Oro Bay, in North-East New Guinea, the site of embarkation for parts of the Division. Again, the Army featured strongly because contact with them equated more access to material possessions. "We moved up to Oro Bay for deportation to Cape Gloucester and while there we were next to an Army camp. I heard a commotion and some Army lads came out of one of the jyKapp, 15. 40 Kapp, 17. 41 Kapp, 17. 42 Kapp, 18. 43 Johnston, 38, and Kapp, 17. 44 John Leonard, Jr., USMC, Oral History Transcript, 1980, 74, Box 92, Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division, and for next citation. 163 tents dragging a twelve foot snake that was under one of the boy's beds." After such hubbub, stories followed. "One of the boys was telling a story and stopped in the middle of a sentence. When they checked to find out why, he [was] staring eye ball to eye ball at the snake when he reached down under the bed to get his shoes."46 William Kapp wrote, "Oct. 18 Went up river, swam and washed clothes. Being clean makes you feel good."47 The entry might seem curt, but the statement brought to light the absence of civilization. Donald Fall remembered the never-ending desire to diversify diets. Access to ordnance often facilitated hunting. "Fish were not a problem. A quarter pound block of explosive was lit and tossed into a river. The explosion brought the fish to the surface. Fair eating."48 Anthony Chillemi recalled his time at Buna, also in North-East New Guinea, with the 7th Marines. One particularly clever idea dawned on some, to use environmental agents against each other. "Some of the men collared chameleons and tied them with light weight sewing thread inside their bunk mosquito netting to feed on mosquitoes."49 William Kapp also recorded the first time the 5th Marines were exposed to their soon-to-be-beloved, Army-supplied jungle hammocks. He scribbled, "Dec. 14 begin five day problem in hills. Entire regiment. Jungle hammocks used for the first time."50 Years later, upon further scrutiny of his diary, Kapp deduced that "after all this time of trying to sleep and rest on the damp hard ground we were issued hammocks. They kept us off the ground, were enclosed in mosquito netting, and were generally welcome but they had real drawbacks like they had to be carried on your back and later in combat they were hell to get out of when shooting started."51 By early December 1943, the 1st Marine Division (with an estimated 75% of its troops having combat experience)52 was prepared for its next assignment. Army inspectors expressed worry over lingering malarial cases, but were impressed by high 45 Melvin Cruthers, Cape Gloucester, New Britain ~ New Britain's European discovery happened in 1642 when Abel Tasman caught sight of the island.56 In 1699, New Britain was proven to be separate from New Guinea by British adventurer William Dampier by sailing through St. George's Strait. Now that it was discovered, the island needed a name.57 Dampier settled on the straight forward New Britain. This crescent-shaped island was eventually annexed by Germany in 1885 along with the northeastern quarter of New Guinea.58 Building its Pacific empire a bit late, Germany had to settle for the leftovers. As historian Colin McEvedy noted, "the German expeditions of 1884-1885 had to be content with bits of Melanesia and Melvin Cruthers in Herschel Cox, Jr., et al, Marines Remember Cape Gloucester World War IIBattle (1996), 10. Manuscript sent to author on February 26, 2006. Also available with the Personal Papers Collection, History and Museums Division, Marine Corps Historical Center, Quantico, VA. Cox, etal, 11-12. 54 Cox, et al, 12. 55 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 3. 56 McEvedy, 48. Tasman discovered New Britain, but perceive it as a peninsula of New Guinea. 57 McEvedy, 54. 58 Gordon L. Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide: A Geo-Military Study (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 172, and Garden, 349. In 1884 Germany took protectorate status over North- East New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. 165 Micronesia that no one else had thought worth taking."59 The British rushed to grab the southeastern portion of New Guinea in response, which was then given over to Australia in 1902.60 The Dutch had already possessed the entire western half of the world's second largest island.61 On September 11, 1914, Australian troops clashed with the Germans in minor engagements.62 After the Great War, the League of Nations granted the region to Australia as a protectorate.63 New Britain, as part of the Bismarck Archipelago, was politically attached to the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea when the Pacific War began. For the Japanese, Imperial General Headquarters was in direct control of the South Seas Detachment, a special force slated for the invasions of Guam first, then Rabaul and the Bismarck Islands second, and last the Palau Islands.64 Japanese carrier-based aircraft bombed critical villages and port installations on January 20, 1942. Land invasions of eastern New Britain began the next day, followed up by the routing of 1400 Australian defenders and eventual massacre of 150 of the 200 survivors.65 By January 30, Japanese planes were arriving to the bustling facilities at Rabaul, the capital of New Britain on the far eastern corner, which saw mass improvements end in late 1942. Cape Gloucester was occupied twelve months after Rabaul was taken.66 Winston Churchill called this move by the Japanese, along with the seizure of Bougainville and even before Guadalcanal, as "the first step in a serious attempt to sever Australia's life-line with the 59 McEvedy, 80. 60 McEvedy, 80-81. Today New Guinea can be safely called a poor country. However, some environmental historians attribute the rugged terrain of New Guinea as a main reason for its economic retardation (the rugged terrain making infrastructure construction too costly) (Garden, 34). The tourism board for West New Britain Province agreed, highlighting that "PNG is richly endowed with natural resources, but exploitation has been hampered by rugged terrain and the high cost of developing infrastructure. Agriculture provides a subsistence livelihood for 85% of the population" from "Environment," About WNB, Tourism West New Britain, United States." The estimated 3000 Melanesians in the Cape Gloucester area, and over 100,000 on New Britain, managed to avoid much of the war. Some of these natives conducted important intelligence and often vital manual labor for the Allies. Usually Australian officers, who were attached to the 1st Marine Division, commanded small groups of Melanesians. The Marines found the Australian officers to also be invaluable.69 Originally, the same July 1942 order that directed Admiral Nimitz to seize Tulagi and Guadalcanal included the taking of Rabaul.70 This proved unfeasible in time. Rabaul was one of Japan's daunting bases, and American strategists were prudent to accept a choke-hold instead of a frontal assault. By the spring of 1944, after two years of effort, Rabaul was neutralized,71 its 90,000 defenders reverting to a semi- agriculture life. The Fifth Air Force, among other things, had spent a good part of 1943 decimating Rabaul's naval and aerial power. This bombing was intensified when the Fifth Air Force was able to use the airstrips on Bougainville. But up until that time, Rabaul was the major threat in the South Pacific. In October 1943, General McArthur captured Finschhafen and the Huon Peninsula along with it. He now faced a new problem, the drive to Saidor. The Japanese still controlled New Britain and relied on the Dampier Straight (Str.) for barge traffic. The US now controlled the Vitiaz Straight as MacArthur continued westward. But, it was believed that the Vitiaz-Dampier bottleneck could not be controlled by two opposing forces. Rooke Island (or Umboi), dividing the Vitiaz Str. from the Dampier Str., was abandoned by the Japanese in early December 1943 and occupied by a Winston Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950), 136. 68 Shaw, Jr., Isolation of Rabaul, 323. The Itni River separates Cape Gloucester from central New Britain. 9 Phase TV: Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain — Borgen Bay - Itni River Area and Occupation of Rooke Island, file #12-1.0001/44 (7813-d), "Annex H," February 20, 1944, 3, entry 427, box 24624, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File, National Archives and records Administration, "Archive II," College Park, MD. Hereinafter Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain. Also, Shaw, Jr., Isolation of Rabaul, 330 for Australian intelligence contributions. 70 John H. Bradley with Jack W. Dice, West Point Military History Series: The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific (New York: Avery Publishing Group, 1989), 121-122, and Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942-February 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 12. 71 Hayashi, Kogun, 102, and Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), xi. 167 company from the Is Marines in mid-February 1944. Yet at Cape Gloucester, at the north-west extreme of New Britain, the Japanese retained two airstrips and one naval anchorage (Borgen Bay). If MacArfhur's New Guinea-Mindanao axis was to come to fruition, this bottleneck had to open and those airstrips and anchorage conquered. A second problem plagued MacArthur. Any 'leap-frogging' on the northern coast of New Guinea was fraught with the potential of a counter-attack from Rabaul's forces. With invading Rabaul directly ruled out, holding Cape Gloucester was the compromise. For Rabaul to attack Army positions along New Guinea's coast, Cape Gloucester had to be utilized. For the US, Cape Gloucester required capturing to break the Vitiaz-Dampier bottleneck and to hold Rabaul at bay, if needed.74 When General Kruger arrived in Brisbane on February 7, 1943 he was given the Sixth Army, consisting of three divisions, two regiments, and some smaller units. The 1st Marine Division, by virtue of recuperating in Australia, fell under the jurisdiction of General MacArthur and was thereinafter under Army operational control (General Kruger) until Pavuvu.75 This could have been challenged by the Navy but was instead conceived of as a trade-off; for when the Army had promised to reinforce Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal had received the 25th Infantry Division instead of the Fiji Line, which the Army preferred due to its pessimistic appraisal of that campaign before the decisive November 1942 naval battles.76 The 1st Marine Division also had a new commander. General William H. Rupertus had taken over on July 8, 1943 from General Vandegrift while in Melbourne.77 Originally, the Army had slated the Division for the defense of Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain, 11. Rooke Island is about twenty miles wide by ten miles long. It is less than ten miles to Sag Sag, New Britain. 73 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume VI, Breaking the Bismarck Barrier, 22 July 1942-1 May 1944 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947-62), 369. Hereinafter Morison, Breaking the Bismarks Barrier. Mindanao is a large island in the southern Philippines and was a central target in the 1944 invasion of that archipelago. Shaw, Jr., Isolation of Rabaul, 297'. Louis Morton, United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: Strategy and Command: The First Two Years (Historical Division, Department of the Army, Washington: GPO, 1962), 407, and Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul, 20. 76 Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two Years, 343. The Army was reluctant at the time, worried over if holding Guadalcanal was tenable (before the conclusive November naval battles). 77 George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), 151. General Rupertus had been assistant division commander, 1st Marine Division, from 1941 to 1943 after commanding the Marine Barracks in Washington since 1938. He commanded the Division from July 1943 to November 1944 (the conclusion of Peleliu). He moved on to be the Commandant of Marine Corps Schools until dying in March 1945. 168 Australia. However, when Brisbane proved to be too malarious and the Division was moved south, it was no longer feasible to think of putting the Division in trench lines.78 In compensation, troop-strapped General MacArthur got the 9th Australian Division when it returned for furlough from the Middle East.79 By mid-summer 1943, two divisions were available for the task of seizing Cape Gloucester: the Army's 32nd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Division, now fresh from months of rehabilitating and retraining.80 The 1st Division was chosen as the assault element over the 32nd Division because the latter was in the grip of malaria. As the planning for New Britain in late-August 1943 noted, "the progress of training of the 32d Division is still being hindered by approximately 1700 cases of recurrent malaria." The 1st Marine Division was to land on New Britain on December 26, 1943. On that day, 11,000 Marines were put ashore against light Japanese opposition but heavy resistance from the rough surf, strong rains, and the inland swamp.82 The 7th Marines, having missed D-Day on Guadalcanal, were the spearhead unit for D-Day; the 1st Marines passed through them later in the day to attack the closer airstrip.83 The 5th Marines landed a few days later, and by December 30, the two airstrips were captured.84 The following three weeks witnessed slow advances against "the terrain, weather, and resilient enemy resistance."85 The sorties flown by the Fifth Air Force nullified the Japanese defenders on D-Day.86 The Japanese's first day of inaction was not repeated in this period as the Marines met heavy resistance in the ridges. Responsible for Cape Gloucester specifically and western New Britain generally fell to 78 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex D: Alamo Force, G-3 Plan," 2, November 14, 1943. Folder 2, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. 79 McMillan, 151. 80 Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul, 275. The Army's 503 Parachute Regiment (about 2000 strong) was also assigned to the mission. The 12th Defense Battalion was attached to the 1st Marine Division. The 41st Division was on New Guinea's northern coast fighting westwards. 81 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex D, Alamo Force, G-3 Plan," 2. 82 Rottman, World War IIPacific Island Guide, 190, and Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul, 290 and 292. 83 Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul, 291. 84 Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul, 293 and 293-294. 85 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 190. 86 Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 344. 169 the Matsuda Force (Bataan veterans), a composite unit comprising of, according to original estimates, anywhere between 4000 to 12,000 men,87 all commanded by Major- General Iwao Matsuda.88 Objectives were completed on January 18, 1943 with the end of the Battle for Hill 660.89 After that time, the 1st Marine Division faced the under- strengthened 17th Division, responsible for central New Britain and standing at about 4900 men.90 On January 21, 1943, the 17th Division (from Shanghai) withdrew to the east while still engaging the 1st Marine Division. Realization had dawned on them that defense of the area was futile. The 17th Division performed a strategic withdrawal to create a final defensive line around Rabaul—still with its 90,000 defenders. The 1st Marine Division held the north-western quadrant of the island,92 while sending out patrols to maintain as much contact as possible with the enemy. By campaign's end casualties for the 1st Marine Division were 352 KIA, 124 MIA, and 982 WIA (similar to Guadalcanal's 650 KIA and 1519 WIA), while the various Japanese units were estimated at 4000 KIA and 420 POWs.93 Phasell, Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, file #12-1.0312/43 (7313-b), "Annex A: Intelligence," 2, December 21, 1943, "Operation Order #1-43: Annex B: Phase II: Annexes," Entry 427, Box 24626, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File, National Archives and Records Association, "Archive II," College Park, MD, argues for between 8400 and 12,000. Hereinafter Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 2. Morison, in Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, argues for 7500 men in the defense of Cape Gloucester (370). Hough, Isolation of Rabaul argues for 10,500 men (which is the high end of the intelligence estimate {Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield). Hough and Crown noted that GHQ, 1st Marine Division, and the Alamo Force (including Army units that attacked other parts of New Britain simultaneously as the 1st Mar. Div.) all had differing estimates ranging from 4000 to 12,000 men. Ultimately, like most Pacific War battles, there is no determinable answer for Japanese numbers. 88 Bernard C. Natty, Marines In World War II Commemorative Series; Cape Gloucester: The Green Inferno (Washington: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1994), 5, and McMillan, 209. 89 The mission of Task Force Backhander (the operational title for Cape Gloucester and New Britain) officially ended on February 11 when the 'Gilnit Group' (units from 1-5) reached the village of Gilnit. However, the fall of Hill 660 meant the end of heavy combat (January 18, 1944). 90 "Annex A: Intelligence," 2, December 21, 1943, "Operation Order #1-43: Annex B: Phase II: Annexes," Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 2. 91 Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 370. Imperial General Headquarters had always assumed that US forces would invade Rabaul, hence the retention of so many troops there (Hough, Isolation of Rabaul, 324). 92 The Joint Chiefs of Staff had proof of the effectiveness of leap-frogging in late-1943 with the by-passing of Bougainville's Japanese strongholds in the north and south. Neutralization by naval and aerial forces followed and the tactic was adopted thereinafter. 93 Guadalcanal figures from Division Commanders Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V, "Annex X: Summary: Killed in Action or Died as a Result of Wounds, First Marine Division (Reinforced) 7 August to 10 December, 1942," 1-2, and "Annex X: August 7 to December 10, 1942," 5, both July 1, 1943, Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Guadalcanal's 39 MIA (for 1st Marine Division only) 170 Eric Bergerad called this type of battle a "squad war," others a war of outposts, and George McMillan a "small war"—noting exactly that "all jungle wars reduce themselves to small wars."94 It is also this last and longest phase of the battle that has been neglected in the literature.95 However, it was during the last weeks of campaigning that the men engaged environmental adversities while the battles with the Japanese remained small and low in tempo. Large action was not seen again until Peleliu later that autumn. In fact, the entire war was leaving the South Pacific by April/May 1944. The Marine's campaign on New Britain kept them there for four months until relieved by the Army's 40th Infantry Division starting in April 23 and finishing on May 4, 1944.96 Combat on New Britain was reduced to a squad war for two basic reasons. First, the thickness of the rainforest forced a reduction in the scale of operations. Machinery like tanks, larger artillery pieces, and even bulldozers, amphibious tractors, and jeeps were limited in use by the rugged terrain and impenetrable flora. As McMillan noted, where a 150mm howitzer was preferred, the Marines had to settle for 37mm cannons because that was "all you can handle."97 Supplying units far from the lines was problematic for the same reason, the lack of roads. The lack of infrastructure meant that the Japanese, with their naval power smashed, were not able to transport large equipment the 300 miles from Rabaul to Cape Gloucester.98 For Rabaul, Cape were included in the KIA figure. New Britain figures from Shaw, Jr., Isolation of Rabaul, "Appendix H, Marine Casualties," 587. Rottman notes 300 KIA and 1000 WIA for the 1st Marine Division on New Britain (192). McMillan, 192. Small war has, in the literature, been replaced by squad war to avoid confusion with the 19th Century British conception of a "small war," meaning a large modern force against a primitive force, typically in a colonized region (like the British against the Zulus). McMillan's use centers around the idea that the landscape and flora forced a reduction in unit sizes that engaged each other, and that the Japanese and Americans fought with squads, instead of divisions, in the jungles. 95 Consider: Morison's naval history contained no discussion of the Battle of the New Britain after the seizure of the airstrips, except for one long citation from McMillan's The Old Breed (Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 387-389). Miller, Jr.'s history for the Army was no better. After a brief discussion fromD-Day to the capture of the airfields, the rest of the campaign disappeared (Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul, 289-294). 96 Rottman, World War IIPacific Island Guide, 192, and McMillan, 227. Rabaul's fate was to be continually but lightly harassed by the 5th Australian Division who replaced the 40th Infantry Division in late-November 1944. At surrender, the Japanese still had 72,000 troops there (53,000 soldiers, 16,000 sailors, and 1200 laborers) living, as Eric Bergerud astutely commented, a semi-agrarian life on the world's largest POW camp (520). 97 McMillan, 192. 98 McMillan, 210. 171 Gloucester might as well have been a distant island—the land between too rugged to traverse, the sea lanes lost to the Allies." The size of units was also reduced as commanders found it difficult to control and maneuver division-sized units. Companies were the central unit in the patrol war for the Marines, and the Japanese often divided their units even further. The repercussion of this was that the Japanese were never really able to strike at the Marines with any appreciable force.100 The Japanese too were suffering the rainforest. McMillan cited a Japanese prisoner who explained how General Matsuda saw the rainforest. '"He remarked with feeling that this jungle warfare would take the spirit out of anybody and make them sick of combat.'"101 General Matsuda was a veteran of the conquest of the Philippines—reflecting that even those experienced in warfare in the rainforest found New Britain challenging. Second, both sides were assigned to generally defensive missions. The large numbers of Japanese troops, estimated at 92,925,102 were kept at Rabaul for defense. After the conquest of the Cape Gloucester area, the 1st Marine Division was waiting for a potential counter-attack from Rabaul that never came.103 In the meantime, they sent patrols forward to meet the enemy while the Japanese sent small units backwards to hold off the Marines. The 1st Marine Division had freedom of movement on much of the island, but not much of New Britain was worth it, and this was the same for the Japanese. New Britain was a battle between two defending forces, neither side really capable of assaulting the other. The context was now set for environmental adversities to take center stage. This combination of factors—a cautious Japanese force, an aggressive environment, and a relatively long campaign—produced a situation where the men were forced to devote more conscious attention to their environmental surroundings. As Robert Leckie noted, about the fourteen weeks after the initial battling, that "it was the Morison, Breaking the Bismarks Barrier, 370. 100 McMillan, 210. 101 McMillan, 211. 102 "Annex A: Intelligence," 2, December 21, 1943, "Operation Order #1-43: Annex B: Phase II: Annexes," Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 2. Rottman claims 94,000 Japanese troops at Rabaul and the surrounding areas. 103 The 1st Marine Division, despite being trained as an amphibious force, was seen as perfect for the role of defending Cape Gloucester since they had been so victorious defending on Guadalcanal. 172 jungle and not the Jap that was now the adversary."104 Donald Fall summarized that combat on New Britain "was mostly patrols [with] some alright and some not so good. Those patrols...plus the living conditions were the situation."105 Jim Johnston remembered the squad war. "The days stretched on into weeks and months, with very few pitched battles like those we would have in later campaigns, but always some casualties. Guys getting wounded, guys getting killed, guys getting sick with new and old maladies. Everyone had black jungle rot on his feet and fungus in his crotch."106 The rainforest forced upon the combatants its constraints for how the war would be fought. For instance, tactics were modified to fit. As Robert Leckie recalled, "those armed with rifles expected to shoot from the hip-because all jungle encounters are sudden, and because the density of the rain forest affords a visibility of about five yards. Who needs to aim at such a range, even if there were time?"107 Such dense brush (ground-level vegetation) meant that casualties were relatively low because the visibility needed for a kill was low too. Citing a pre-invasion vegetation study, the official history noted that "observation is limited—a standing man can be observed at about 50 yards; a prone man usually will be concealed at 10 yards."108 The Division had also converted from the trusty Springfield .303 (M-1903) to the semi-automatic M- 1 rifle (while in Melbourne), which "could lay down a deadly volume of fire at the comparatively short ranges typical of jungle warfare."109 Firing in dense brush required firepower over accuracy and, despite nostalgia, no one disagreed with the improvement (except snipers). However, machine guns still needed clear fields of fire along anticipated routes of approach. The Marines found that clearing brush was exhausting. To their horror, they also realized that cut vegetation grew back rapidly, and paths or fields of fire were quickly re-conquered. So machine guns had smaller yard coverage 104 Leckie, 257. 105 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 2. 106 Johnston, 55. 107 Leckie, 232. 108 Frank Hough and John Crown, The Campaign on New Britain (Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1992 [1952]), Appendix II, "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations," by Levi Burcham, 193, Hough and Crown noted that Burcham severed as assistant D-2 (Division intelligence) during the Cape Gloucester operation and subsequently became a Forestry Technician with the Californian Division of Forestry (by the publication date in 1952). 109Nalty,32. 173 than their European counterparts; the field of fire on New Britain was reduced to dozens of yards instead of hundreds.110 The Japanese utilized dense foliage in the foothills and on river banks to defend against the Marines who did not even see them until "the jungle exploded in their faces."111 Just one 37mm cannon or heavy machine gun made all the difference. Even tanks had to be escorted by tractors and bulldozers. Where Jeeps made a significant contribution on Guadalcanal, they were of less utility on New Britain. The Division had its first experiences with bazookas on New Britain. An effective flat-trajectory weapon in normal circumstances (the fields of Europe), bazookas on New Britain were considered "worthless; its shells would not detonate in the soft mud."112 This frustrated the Marines' ability to utilize the new and promising weapon, but conversely, the soft mud sometimes saved lives where ordnances were concerned. Bob Stiles recalled that "I do remember one case where the damn weather probably saved my life. I was standing in mud and water up to my kneecaps when a shell came in right next to me. Now, get this, the area was so soft it didn't explode. It wasn't a dud; it just didn't explode."113 If sea voyages made Marines alter their perception of distances, the rainforest equally distorted these perceptions, but in the reverse. In the rainforest progress always seemed slow and distances covered never seemed impressive on a map. An after-action report noted "steep and slippery trails made the travel time much longer than was usual for that distance."114 Axioms about average durations for route marches, again normal in the fields of Europe and North America, were inapplicable on New Britain. As Leckie remembered, a "patrol moves slowly in the jungle. Fear of ambush produces the most extreme caution, which reduces speed to a crawl"115 and that "[a]t such speed, it would take a day to move a mile and return. Should the trail be hilly, or especially twisting, it might take longer."116 Basic movement of the individual and the unit was painstakingly slow. Robert Leckie provided an account of the 110 Bergerad, 348. 111 Asa Bordages in McMillan, 193. 112 McMillan, 197. Bazookas first appeared in November 1943. 113 Bob Stiles in Berry, 87. 114 Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain, 3. Referring specifically to the trails from Sag Sag to the area southeast of Cape Gloucester. 115 Leckie, 232. 116 Leckie, 232. 174 rainforest floor during a hasty withdrawal. "A field of smooth, wet, slippery rocks lay underfoot.... We slipped and slithered and bumped and rolled and clattered all that distance of a few hundred yards to the water, expecting that any moment would bring the enemy fire down upon us."117 Despite daunting numbers of Japanese on the island, the first challenge was the land itself. After three weeks of tough resistance, the men faced months of the rainforest as their dominant enemy. The Land of New Britain ~ About 130 million years ago the southern megacontinent of Gondwana, containing many of today's continents, started to separate into several large continents.118 The Australasian section, named Sahul, began breaking apart from Gondwana 45 to 80 million years ago.119 Splintering off of Sahul were smaller fragments, more commonly known as continental islands (individual small tectonic plates), like parts of Indonesia, New Guinea, New Britain, and the larger islands of the Solomon Islands. Today these continental islands ride north "with the drift of tectonic plates into the Pacific."120 Having risen out of the sea, all plant and animal life had to migrate to these islands. The biota of Pacific islands, past the limit of early human settlement, were introduced from Australia and southeast Asia by various means. Current estimates rest at 75% of plants being introduced by birds, 23% of plants floating over, and a small 2% of seeds and tiny biota drifting in the wind.122 By virtue of having more land space, continental islands like Guadalcanal and New Britain received greater diversity in plants and animals.123 Around the globe "the most diverse of terrestrial ecosystems" are considered equatorial rainforests.124 This diversification 117 Leckie, 243-244. Don Garden, Nature and Human Societies Series: Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2005), 330. These continents include South America, Africa, Antarctica, and the sub-continent of India. 119 Garden, 331. 120 Garden, 29. 121 For human settlement patterns in the Pacific, see Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (New York: The Penguin Group, 1998), 1-30. 122 Garden, 35, citing Brij V. Lai and Kate Fortune, eds, The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2000). 123 Garden, 29. 1241. M. Turner, The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical Rain Forest (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 6. 175 was also aided by their relatively close proximity to the extensive biodiversity of the Australian continent. New Britain spans 370 miles, varies in width from twenty to seventy miles, and has about 1000 miles of shoreline.125 A volcanic mountain range spans the center of the crescent-shaped island, running east to west, with elevations no higher than 7600 feet.126 The mountains themselves tend to have light brush under tall trees, and the terrain is extremely rugged. The Division was seldom subject to missions in the central mountain range. Ringing the foothills of the central mountains are over 1000 miles of coastal plains. Although this terrain is less rugged than the central mountains, the thick brush presented an equally daunting challenge. It was on the coast, in the swamps, and around the foothills where the Division spent its time on New Britain; neither Japanese nor Americans found much use for the wild abandon of the mountains. Despite New Britain's isolation from the world, thousands of years of human occupation had meant that "the existing natural rain forests have been used by the indigenous people in various ways."127 Melanesians had cleared stretches of the northern coastal lands, under European and Christian pressures to adopt farming and fishing over hunting. This, in turn, had created "secondary growth" brush, characterized as being denser than natural "primary growth."128 In addition to the secondary growth being thicker, the volcanoes of north-western New Britain had provided "a source of soil nutrient enrichment"129 and added to the overall growth-rate of all vegetation. Disappointingly, brush grew back so quickly, that even if the men had "exhaustingly and agonizingly" created a trail, it "was overgrown the following week." Secondary growth and nutrient enrichment were accompanied by high levels of rainfall, which in turn fostered impressive floral growth (even while the rain leeched soil nutrients). Located between the coastal lands and the central mountain ranges' Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 319. 126 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 185. 127 Dieter Mueller-Dombois and F. Raymond Fosberg, Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands (New York, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 1998), 56. 128 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 185, and Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 323. Even in today's rainforest, secondary growth is the norm. As asserted by Mueller-Dombois and Fosberg "wherever rain forests prevail today, they can be considered secondary rather than primary in origin" with the exception of New Britain's and New Ireland's interior (56). 129 Mueller-Dombois and Fosberg, 49. 130 Bergerud, 348. 176 foothills were swamps—really 'mangrove forests' because they are characterized as large masses of interlacing roots submerged in water. The loose soil turned the water opaque. Mud was such a problem for the Marines because of the amount of wetness that converted the reddish-brown volcanic soil into a particularly daunting soup.131 Several smallish swamps bracketed the inland side of many north-western beaches. These swamps pooled inland from the beaches since they were protected from the ocean surf, and lacked drainage. Aerial photographs of the region failed to notice the swamps due to the thick rainforest canopy.132 Although commanders were aware of the volcanic ashen beach and adjacent red-brown mud, "no one was quite ready for the swamp that stood just back of the low embankment behind the beaches."133 However, regimental commands had ingrained flexibility into their planned maneuvers and consequently dealt with the inland swamps as best as possible without compromising operations. Flat grasslands also occupied small parts of western New Britain (and were reserved for use by artillery due to the flat ground). Cape Gloucester's limited grasslands were the site of the airstrips. The entire Cape Gloucester area was dominated by a twin-peaked volcano called Mt. Talawe, seven miles inland, which had blanketed the beaches with a black volcanic ash (much like the beaches of Iwo Jima). The land of New Britain was dominated by trees. Tree test plot comparisons have demonstrated that New Guinea (in this case "Papuasia"134) has more trees per hectare than many comparable equatorial rainforests.135 Botanist K. Paijmans presented data from a variety of sources. The data showed that on a 1.5 hectare test plot in Nigeria's Okumo Forest Reserve, studied in 1955, tree density stood at 451 individual trees. A 1.5 hectare plot on Panama's Barro Colorado Island, in 1963, yielded 489 trees. A larger 2.0 hectare plot in Malaya's Bukit Lagong Forest Reserve, in 1949, held 559 trees. A 2.0 hectare plot on a typical ridge top in Borneo's Andulau Forest Reserve, in Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 321. 132 Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 321 and 323. 133 Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 321. 134 Some botanists use the term "Papuasia" instead of Melanesia, prioritizing vegetation similarities over human ethnicity. Papuasia extends from the Vogelkop Peninsula in the west to San Cristobal in the east but excludes the Santa Cruz Islands from John S. Womersley, ed, Handbooks of the Flora of Papua New Guinea, Volume I (Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1978), xiii-xv. More recent environmental history groups the major Gondwana fragments as "Near Oceania" (referring to Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, etc (Garden, xiii). 135 A hectare is slightly over 107,000 square feet. An acre is slightly over 43,000 square feet. 177 1964, saw 740 trees. And finally, on an average 0.8 hectare (or two acre) plot in a typical Papua New Guinean hill forest region, in 1970, there were 623 individual trees.136 New Guinea's 623 trees on 0.8 hectares versus Borneo's 740 trees for more than double the space demonstrated just how thick the rainforests of New Guinea are. However, New Britain's tree density was reportedly much less than the numbers presented by Paijmans for mainland New Guinea. Contemporary knowledge noted that in "swamps forests" mature tree spacing was "wide" and in "tropical rain forests" the tree density "is relatively open."138 Captain Levi Burcham, the original writer on the role of New Britain's vegetation on 1st Marine Division operations, noted that in the "tropical rain forest" there is "[ujsually...only ten to twenty of these mature trees per acre."139 Compared to Paijmans' presentation of a New Guinean test plot at 0.8 hectares, that would mean that Burcham thought there were about twenty to forty trees per hectare versus mainland New Guinea's 600-plus. Several factors could explain the contradiction but the important point is that these comparisons are about trees, and in Burcham's cases, mature trees only. Impenetrability was the sum of trees, young and old, and brush—non-tree flora. In this, Burcham wrote that "[cjover and concealment are complete in swamp forest."140 So, regardless of tree density, brush created near- impenetrability. Combat veterans remembered the impenetrability of New Britain's landscape. George McMillan cited a Marine who had just returned from Hill 660,141 recalling that "[y]ou could hardly walk. If you'd try to watch where you were stepping, the vines would cut your face."142 McMillan also cited a platoon leader saying that the "secondary growth was terrific, like a maze."143 This paragraph's information was derived from K. Paijmans, ed, New Guinea Vegetation (Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1976), Table 2.2, 71. 137 Hough, The Campaign on New Britain, Appendix II, "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations," by Levi Burcham, 192. 138 Hough, The Campaign on New Britain, Appendix II, "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations," by Levi Burcham, 193. 139 Hough, The Campaign on New Britain, Appendix II, "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations," by Levi Burcham, 193. 140 Hough, The Campaign on New Britain, Appendix II, "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations," by Levi Burcham, 192. 141 The Battle for Hill 660, January 13-18, was the last pitched battle before the war of patrols. 142 Anonymous in McMillan, 202. 143 Anonymous in McMillan, 200, 178 Canopy density, which was "set so closely together as to form virtually a complete canopy overhead"144 had a tangible influence on the Japanese conduct of limited operations against patrolling Marines. Veterans often recount the propensity of Japanese snipers in trees, snipers being a typical characteristic of a squad war in a dense rainforest. Jim Johnston observed that the ultimate function of the sniper was to hold up large groups of Marines. "Most everywhere we went in the jungle we would eventually encounter snipers that were both efficient and difficult to locate. We learned not to let them stop us. We would leave some spotters to try to find them, and the rest of us would advance through the snipers."145 The snipers of the 17th Division worked with the environment, primarily in that New Britain's brush and tree-top canopy both provided excellent coverage. Pre-invasion Marine and Army planning even mentioned the likelihood of the Japanese putting "riflemen in trees."146 Anthony Chillemi noted a particular setting where the Marines "were among a growth of huge mahogany trees, some having bases with a diameter of 20 or more feet."147 The problem with the large trees was two-fold. First, their ground-level root system "made large concave protective alcoves which could easily become hidden sites for sniper nests."148 Second, the Japanese snipers positioned themselves in the tree tops. Consequently, the corpsmen found themselves "dressing chest wounds and other soft tissue wounds caused mostly by sniper fire. The hits were usually bullet wounds that had a small entry hole but which left a large exit hole as the expanding projectile passed through the soft tissue of the body."149 The Japanese were adept at utilizing the ground-level surface root system of trees and the strangling branches of banyan trees. Banyans are actually figs and grow in the crevices of a tree's bark. Having been spread by birds, the seeds then germinate and send roots towards the ground, sometimes creating intricate and tough 'web-like' Hough, The Campaign on New Britain, Appendix II, "The Vegetation of New Britain and its Effect on Military Operations," by Levi Burcham, 193. 145 Johnston, 53. First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation: "Annex G - 1st Mar Div Operation Order #2-43: Annex C: Medical," 7, November 14, 1943, Folder 2, Box 3, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. Hereinafter Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex C, Medical." 147 Chillemi, New Britain, 8. 148 Chillemi, New Britain, 8. 149 Chillemi, New Britain, 8. 179 structures. Leading the wounded back to the beach after the Battle of Johnson's Ridge, just a few days after D-Day, Bob Shedd recalled a Japanese defensive position situated in a banyan tree. "The banyan tree machine gun fortifications near the road were an excellent example of the Japanese ability to utilize what was available."150 He continued to note that "when coconut logs are laid against these in sloping horizontal rows, the trees easily become a stout bastion, especially when the logs are covered with a foot or two of sand and dirt. The shoulder mounted bazooka rockets would imbed in the soft surface and not explode, and hitting the tree trunk had little effect."151 When taking into account the terrain of western New Britain, Army and Marine planners were concerned with how the land fit into Japanese defense plans more than their own submergence into that same land. The planners asked themselves: "[t]o what extent will the Japanese use the terrain against us?"152 This concern revolved around the ability of the Japanese to utilize the terrain for defensive advantages, and the Japanese could initiate counter-landing operations from specific staging areas at Cape Gloucester. In this, US planners knew that the Japanese's advantage lay in their intimate knowledge of the ground, particularly trails. Here planners estimated that the "numerous streams, ridges and forest covered areas" gave the Japanese terrain features to anchor their defenses. The Japanese did utilize the ridges for defense, although Cape Gloucester's ridges never became the complex honeycombs that were 150 Shedd in Cox, et al, 54. 151 Shedd in Cox, et al, 54. 152 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 7, November 14, 1943, Folder 2, Box 7, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA. D2, the intelligence section of the Division, derived its information about New Britain from a variety of sources. A small band of Australian, American, and Melanesian men, trained in the amphibious scouting school, landed on western New Britain in September 1943 to conduct reconnaissance. A small Marine unit landed in November for several days to perform reconnaissance. The Division Aerial Photo Interpretation Unit (a sub-section of D2) used photos from the Fifth Air Force. The Fifth Air Force, drawing from numerous missions over the island towards Rabaul, and the Division's Air Liaison Unit conducted most of the visual reconnaissance. Various channels from the US Army's Sixth Army were utilized, as was the Brisbane-based Central Interpretation Unit, CHQ, "1st Marine Division, Intelligence Annex to Special Action Report (Cape Gloucester)," 1-2 and 6-7, no date, Box 7, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives and Records Association, "Archive II," College Park, MD, (this annex seems to be a D2 self-history or maybe just of its photographic section) and John Miller, Jr., United States Army in World War II; The War in the Pacific: Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul (Washington: Office of Chief of Military History, 1959), 276-277. Hereinafter Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul. First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 7. 180 later seen on Peleliu and Okinawa. The thickness of the secondary growth rainforests in Cape Gloucester drew comment from planners as they assumed the Japanese would take advantage of this area to "construct well concealed positions, dug in and mutually defensive."154 This did come true, but more so for Japanese snipers who preferred hiding in trees. Gun emplacements had been built at various sites along the trails of western and central New Britain, but when the nature of the Japanese mission became a strategic withdrawal, the Marines often found these emplacements abandoned. The assumptions about how the Japanese would engage defense tactics probably reflected the planner's knowledge about the upcoming Operation Galvanic, Makin and Tarawa Atolls in the Gilbert Islands, set for November 20, 1943. Except for the first few weeks of the four months of campaigning on New Britain, the Japanese did not directly engage a defense-in-depth strategy. Up until the pivotal Battle of Biak (May 27 to late-June 1944) the Japanese did not use Fukkaku positions that defined later Pacific War battles.155 Fukkaku refers to mutually supporting defense positions typically embedded in a honeycombed ridge. Tarawa was the major exception to this.156 So, Marine planners by November 14, 1943, six days before the invasion of Tarawa began, did not known the beating the 2nd Marine Division would take there. Yet, they were reasonably aware of the particular make-up of Japanese defensive positions on Tarawa. The Cape Gloucester area was surrounded by 7000 yards of reef and this caused worry for planners, but only in relation to rough surf. On D-Day, all LSTs carrying troops and equipment navigated the few passages in the reef without any problems.157 In fact, the sites for the invasion beaches were predicted upon the gaps in the reef, as for one "mile and a half on each side of Cape Gloucester there is no fringing reef, and large ships can lie close inshore in the immediate vicinity of the cape."158 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 8. 155 Notably Biak, Peleliu, Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. For a detailed discussion on Fukkaku positions, see Joseph H. Alexander, Storm Landings: Epic Amphibious Battles of the Central Pacific (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997) and Theodore M. Gatchel, At the Water's Edge: Defense Against the Modern Amphibious Assault (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996). Tulagi and Gavutu/Tasimbogo were also small exceptions. Conversely, the urban combat of Manila was the major exception to the Fukkaku positions used in later battles. 157 Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 2. Shaw, Jr., Isolation ofRabaul, 321. 181 Marine planners seemed to be imposing on the Japanese how they themselves would ideally defend the area. In this, the planners were, in essence, predicting the eventual employment of the Fukkaku positions. For instance, they noted that the Japanese "would probably use reverse slopes fox holes in which they can protect themselves from our artillery and mortar fire and re-occupy the defensive positions in the ridge lines upon the fire lifting."159 This statement sounds as if it belongs to an estimate about Okinawa, where reverse-slope defensive positioning was a defining tactic. Fortunately for the Marines, the Japanese never dug in too deeply in the Cape Gloucester area. Most pre-invasion worries did not materialize. However, a plethora of environmental adversities did materialize, erroneously left out of the planning. Marine and Army planners, when considering the rainforest of Cape Gloucester, were generally optimistic. They correctly understood that secondary growth forests were denser than primary growth. They worried that these secondary growth areas would provide excellent coverage for Japanese defense and realized that for the Marines it was "practically impassable except for foot troops and for them it is hard going."160 However, they erroneously assumed that the natural rainforest was easily passable; as they claimed, this rainforest "presents no great obstacle."161 With the assumption that the rainforest presented "no great obstacle," planners conceived of what thousands of Japanese soldiers could do, in terms of deadly defenses. But what their assumption failed to take into account, was that the density of flora ultimately kept the Japanese from amassing together in daunting numbers. The Japanese defenders in central New Britain performed a tactical withdrawal and never grouped together even hundreds of troops for combat. This combination of withdrawal plus the inability to amass troops kept Marine casualties low, not to mention the fact that western and central New Britain never received the months of preparation that an island like Peleliu did. Rabaul was focused on New Guinea in 1942-43 and when it became apparent that US forces would strike at western New Britain, it was too 159 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 8. 160 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Appendix 1" to "Annex A," 4. 161 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Appendix 1" to "Annex A," 4. 182 difficult for Rabaul to enforce the Cape Gloucester area. Perhaps ironically, the near- impenetrability of the rainforest kept US and Japanese forces from ravaging each other in greater numbers. The Weather of New Britain ~ New Guinea's climate is dictated by the seasonal latitudinal movements of two main tropical air masses. The south-east trades control the South-East season, the longer season for the region, spanning from May to November. The perturbation belt controls the North-West season, a shorter but significantly wetter season stretching from December to April, the period in which the 1st Marine Division campaigned on New Britain.162 There is often a short period of calm weather between the seasons (known as the doldrums) that extends from mid-October to mid-December and from mid-February to mid-April.163 Generally, since the air comes from these differing sources, the weather varies considerably on New Guinea. Within the perturbation belt the air is "generally warm, moist and unstable"164 and so wetter weather is brought to New Guinea particularly during this season. Compared to the rest of the globe, "Papua New Guinea is one of the largest constantly wet areas of the world."165 For an illustration, cloud cover is present for over 50% of the year.166 In addition, extreme humidity occurs in March and April when the North-West season switches to the South-East season. Botanists Dieter Mueller- Dombois and F. Raymond Fosberg noted that they "describe the climate of these islands [the Bismarck Archipelago] as very humid, promoting equatorial rain forest vegetation throughout."167 Albert Cowdrey wrote of New Guinea that it "seemed to belong to a younger earth where life was more fecund, its forms more preposterous and splendid. But those who fought there found intolerable labor and death in an endless 162 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 173. Sometimes "northwest monsoon" and "southeast monsoon." 163 The spring doldrums account for non-linear temperatures and rainfall figures for the north west season. 164 Edgar Ford, ed, Papua New Guinea: Resource Atlas (Milton, Queensland: Jacaranda Press Pty Ltd, 1974), 8. Hereinafter Papua New Guinea: Resource Atlas. 165 Papua New Guinea: Resource Atlas, 8. 166 Papua New Guinea: Resource Atlas, 8. 167 Dieter Mueller-Dombois and F. Raymond Fosberg, Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands (New York, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 1998), 45. 183 variety of forms."168 As Gordon Rottman concluded about New Britain, "regardless of the season, rain is encountered year-round as is high heat and humidity."169 Unlike 1 70 Guadalcanal, New Britain has no dry season. Rainforest ecologists claim that humidity, and not temperature per se, is what the non-acclimatized individual finds so distressing about tropical regions. For instance, Longman and Jenik noted that the "human body is a bad thermometer" and that "the feeling of discomfort is due mainly to the high humidity and low wind speed near the forest floor, while it is often hotter outside."171 One of the ironies faced was that their ponchos, efficient as they were in helping to keep dry, trapped moisture and heat inside and generated profuse sweating. So, although the Marine might be dry from rain, he was soaked by his own sweat caused from strenuous work and the oppressive humidity. Donald Fall recalled that "wrapped in your poncho, you woke up in the morning and you were clammy and wet."172 The rainforest's humidity caused intense thirst amongst those on patrol. Robert Shedd remarked on his desperation for water shortly after landing on Willaumez Peninsula, jutting out about midway across the northern coast. "For the next couple of days, our company made a sweep to the south and then turned north towards the Talasea area. On the second day we were getting desperate for water. We chased a pig out of a puddle and filled our canteens, added the halazone tablets and as far as I know with no bad effects."173 William Kapp recorded with brevity, "Mar. 10 Hunted for water."174 Comparable data on rainfall levels and temperatures, between western New Britain and the continental US, demonstrates an important part of the Marine's environmental experience. New Guinea's temperatures and rainfall levels are among the highest in the world. What was normal for Cape Gloucester was an extreme for Albert E, Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 73. 169 Rottman, World War II Pacific Island Guide, 173. 170 Mueller-Dombois and Fosberg, 45. 171 Kenneth A. Longman and Jan Jenik, Tropical Ecology Series: Tropical Forest and its Environment (London: Longman Group Limited, 1974), 3. 172 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 2. 173 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 3. 174 Kapp, 30. 184 young American men, even if they were from an area of meteorological extremes in the continental US. Today, the province of West New Britain's tourism board attempts to entice would-be tourists with its slogan "MegaDiversity, MegaExperience." They do, however, warn that the "palm oil province" is "very close to the equator and is hot all year round, with temperatures ranging from 24 to 31° C (75 to 90° F). Humidity is high at all times."175 For tropical rainforest regions, 27°C (80.5°F) is considered to be the general average,176 and at Cape Gloucester the typical daytime temperature is about 90°F.177 For instance, the forest of Cote D'lvoire, in western Africa, during the month 1 78 of February has an average maximum temperature of 26°C (78.8°F). For a comparison to the continental US, consider the following three average maximum annual temperatures. Tucson's International Airport, in the south of blistering Arizona, records 82.2°F as its average maximum annual temperature. San Antonio's Brooks Air Force Base records 80.2°F, while further south in Texas, at Corpus Christi's International Airport, the maximum average is 81.0°F.181 New Guinea's temperatures surpass some of America's hottest cities, hi the month of August, all of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida can reach over 81.5°F. These numbers are certainly comparable to Cape Gloucester but what separates western New Britain from the American South is New Guinea's combination of high temperatures and high rainfall levels. In the continental US, the regions with high temperatures do not typically have high rainfall, except perhaps Louisiana. Even then, "Environment," About WNB, Tourism West New Britain, 1 8^ New Orleans' annual average rainfall, 62.2 inches, is about a third of Lae, in eastern New Guinea, receiving a daunting 180.4 inches of rainfall on average per year. Rainfall is the last thing discussed by West New Britain's official tourism page, in regards to their local environment. The site explains that "[ajnnual precipitation is extremely high at about 3,800 mm or 150 inches. The dry season lasts from May to November, associated with the south-east monsoon, although heavy tropical rains can occur throughout the year."185 America's wettest cities are comparable to but do not surpass western New Britain in terms of rainfall.186 And the following figures are US extremes, certainly not the average amount of rainfall that continental Americans are used to. Olympia, Oregon, adjacent one of the rainiest parts of the continental US, receives an annual average rainfall of 51.7 inches.187 Downtown Shreveport, in central Louisiana, receives slightly more rainfall at 53.5 inches.188 Naples, Florida, one of 1 SO America's most southern cities, receives an annual average rainfall of 52.9 inches. Even continental America's single wettest area, Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, receiving an average yearly rainfall level of 90.7 inches, only breeches half of Lae's impressive wetness at 180.4 inches.190 For a tropical comparison, consider that the hills adjacent to Freetown, Sierra Leone, receive more than 5000mm (196 inches) of rain during the rainy season 183 "Average Rainfall," New Orleans INTL AP, Jefferson County, Louisiana USA, World Climate, 2008, (roughly seven months). However, unlike New Britain, Sierra Leone experiences a dramatic dry season where for five months the monthly average is only 25mm (0.98 inches).191 By any standards, eastern New Guinea and New Britain are wet places. As Bergerud noted, "in the South Pacific, rain and mud took on a different dimension. To begin with, they were always present. There was no genuinely dry terrain in the theatre."192 New Britain's rainfall was the dominant environmental challenge. The rainforest set the terms by which the Marines and Japanese battled, but rainfall defined that experience. During the planning for the New Britain offensive, Marine planners poured their energy into theoretical tactical responses from the Japanese. This was as normal as it was logical, and that it dominated basic planning made sense. Still, Guadalcanal had shown that environmental obstacles were serious threats not to be taken lightly. It was somewhat strange then that in the thirteen pages of "essential elements of information" weather only received a terse three paragraphs.193 The planners conceptualization of potential weather problems was restricted to two broad questions: "[t]o what extent will the weather influence our plans" and "[t]o what extent will the weather influence the Japanese plans."194 Terrain, as discussed earlier, received significantly more attention than weather. Of first concern was how weather could influence the landings. Knowing that the North-West season, the more hostile of the two main seasons, started in mid- December, planners realized that an invasion by small craft was problematic. Four-foot surf did greet the Division on D-Day, but luckily nothing came of it. Invasion by larger craft, instead of the Higgins boats of August 1942 or even newer Amtracks, ensured troop safety from the surf. Various reefs were efficiently navigated. Next in consideration was the possibility of flash floods in the coastal flats (the thin strip of land ringing the island and separating the beaches from the foothills of the central mountain range). Planners appeared optimistic, noting that the coastal fiats absorb 191 Longman and Jenik, 3. 192 Bergerud, 65. 193 "Essential Elements of Information" in First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 1-13. 194 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 7. 187 excessive rainfall while simultaneously allowing passage by foot and vehicle. This was true for foot travel as Marines found ways to negotiate New Britain's terrain, but the effort was enormous. As for vehicle passage, the planners were overly optimistic. As it turned out, medium tanks were effectively used during the invasion phase, but in a limited manner and almost always in conjunction with the help of bulldozers. Bulldozers had the responsibility of manipulating the land while under Japanese fire. Aside from the surf and soaked terrain, "bad weather" was seen as most restrictive on "our air effort."195 Emphasis was placed on the ominous caveat that air support could become "impossible" during the critical initial stages of invasion. Heavy rains in a raging storm did accompany D-plus 1, but air support was not needed in an appreciable manner either on D-Day or D-plus 1. What air support there was, was enough to neutralize the Japanese defenders on the morning of D-Day. During the first six days on Cape Gloucester, heavy rains turned the beach area in "a sea of mud."196 Beach unloading became a nightmare, not unlike Guadalcanal. With the lack of Japanese resistance on D-Day though, the crowded beaches never amounted to a disaster. The only vehicles that kept up with the advancing troops were amphibian tractors, as wheeled and tracked vehicles had limited value. The heavy rains had overflowed the swamps just inland from the beaches. As Cape Gloucester was basically the drainage zone of Mt. Talawa, "many streams which emptied into the area in the beachhead area and long the route of advance toward the airfield, became raging torrents and increased the difficulties of transportation."197 The after-action report, however, noted the positive to all this rain: Japanese air power was grounded and "undoubtedly lessened losses by bombing attacks on the beachhead area" despite that the men "were soaked to the skin and their clothes never dried out during the entire operation."198 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Annex A, Intelligence," 7. 196 Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 6. 197 Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 6. 198 Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, 6, and previous citation. 188 The Narrowed Scope of Existence ~ On New Britain, and more than on Guadalcanal, Peleliu, or Okinawa, environmental adversities narrowed the individual Marine's scope of existence. Environmental adversities emerged as one of two primary challenges, secondary only to combat in terms of mortality and potential trauma. Nonetheless, environmental adversities were essential to the experience. Combat was sporadic and minimal after the initial phase at Cape Gloucester, giving the Marines ample time to contend with the process of making the rainforest livable and functional for the gears of war. The combination of combat, living conditions, and environmental adversities caused a profound drain on the physical and mental energy of the infantry while simultaneously forcing their minds to focus on elemental pursuits of survival. Jim Johnston wrote decades after the battle that ideologies were ever-present in their minds, but corporeal realities drew the dominant attention. "Though he may have an awareness of such things as honor and fidelity and eternity, he applies himself primarily to the immediate and elemental pursuits of survival: Where is the water and food? How do we get it? What's the best way to stay warm and dry? Who's shooting at us, and from where?199 Robert Leckie agreed. Environmental adversities had shifted concepts of personal comfort to a relativity unimaginable degree. The comfort drawn from something so seemingly trivial as a cup of coffee was of a great magnitude in New Britain's bewildering landscapes. The war was forgotten... Who cared? The day was but twenty-four hours and the mind had but two or three things to command it, objects like dryness, food-oh, most of all, most unbelievably of all, a hot cup of coffee-a clean, dry pair of pants and a place out of the rain! Hours passed in precocious contemplation of that moment just before darkness, when...a tiny fire was lighted and water heated in a canteen cup.200 With environmental surroundings so foreign, it took all the men had to muster the energy to combat both enemies. In a global conflict in part defined by the fury of technology unleashed, New Britain witnessed a contest that was conducted by small groups of individuals subject to the environment. Johnston illustrated this, noting that Johnston, 68. Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (NewYork: ibooks, Inc., 2001 [1957]), 258. 189 the Division's time there was really about individual Marines carrying the implements of war on their backs. He wrote: New Britain was a miserable son of a bitch from beginning to end. No matter how many high-powered machines were available to carry people about, when it came time to go into the war the line company fighters carried all they were going to need on their backs: whatever was necessary to protect themselves from the weather and to feed themselves, as well as the where-with-all to wage war. In other words, about all they could carry and still function halfway decently.201 With the landscape significantly negating the influences of military technology, New Britain was truly an infantryman's war; and infantry lacking the structures of civilization were soldiers under full exposure to environmental adversities. They did not return to barracks after battle. Hot food was not the norm. Hygiene deteriorated. All material possessions were subject to these conditions, reminding the men that the rainforest was all-encompassing. This also aided in the processes of dehumanization and barbarism that infantry were often subject to. Leaving New Britain was unceremonious. Again, the Marines were tipped off when the Army arrived. Robert Leckie recalled that "[a]n Army unit was arriving as we were departing. There were hoots and mock falsettos from our raggedy ranks when we perceived the first equipment to be deposited on the beach - stoves and suitcases - and then we were marching aboard the L.S.T.'s.. .and leaving that accursed island." That the Army carried with them materials of civilization highlighted just how elemental the Marines' existence had been. Aside from the jungle hammock, the men had toiled and warred without all the machines that were put to use in Europe. That centuries of Western modernization had passed New Britain by meant that the Marines and Japanese battled on a primordial island that turned out to be far more than mere backdrop. So daunting was the terrain, in combination with the rainfall, mud, and biota, that the men came to see, and remember, that New Britain was a battle with Nature more than the Japanese. Johnston, 49. Leckie, 272. 190 Chapter Seven Insufferable Days: Memories of New Britain Jim Johnston's own summary about his experiences on New Britain revolved around his physical enervation at the hands of several interrelated environmental adversities. "It was, day after night after day, the same terrific exertion under the same miserable conditions. Later in the war, when it rained so long on Okinawa that everything got soaked up, conditions were harsh, but nothing compared with the insufferable days in New Britain's infested, muddy jungle mountains."1 The intensity of rainfall, the challenges of the rugged terrain, and the bewildering vegetation were all at the heart of the veterans' memory of their wartime experience on New Britain. The Battle of New Britain, the 1st Marine Division's second Pacific War campaign, generally holds little importance in World War II and even Pacific War histories. Such was its obscurity before the war, and so is its anonymity after the war. As obscure as it was primordial, New Britain nonetheless topped the list of the most meteorologically and ecologically challenging battles faced by any unit in the entire global conflict. Robert Leckie once wrote that it "was into this green hell that we were inserted...here was fought that battle with the rain forest, here the jungle and the men were locked in a conflict far more basic than our shooting war with the Japanese-for here the struggle was for existence itself."2 Since combat was only one part of the campaign experience, Leckie highlighted that just surviving was an ordeal unto itself. The Foreign Landscape ~ George McMillan conceived of a basic law for fighting men: that "the natural hazards of the battlefield must never equal the hazards contrived by the enemy," and, if this happens, the "fighting man will feel he is a victim of an injustice."3 This, however, was the case on New Britain, and so McMillan concluded that "[that] is why the men who fought at Cape Gloucester remember the place more for the jungle than for the 1 James W. Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2000 [1998], 66. 2 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 258. 3 George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), 175. 191 Japanese." The injustice specifically being their powerlessness against their exposure to the elements. Decades later, veteran memories still confirm this conclusion. For some, recalling memories from decades ago is a difficult trial, while others find the challenge lays in their perspicacity. Herschel Cox noted his own difficulty in trying to describe the conditions on New Britain. "It is almost impossible to describe the terrible conditions that were endured."5 Other veterans most often keep it simple. Robert Shedd wrote that "[of] New Britain, we seem to remember the rain and the jungle as much as, if not more than the Japs."6 Veteran George Peto was equally minimalist, noting that "the elements plus the Japs on New Britain would try the patience of any man."7 But whether the exercise of remembering and describing wartime experiences yields minimal or detailed explanations, the veterans are virtually unanimous on the factors that plagued them. Here Herschel Cox stated that the men collectively "recall three common trials: the enemy, the hostile jungle environment, and the ceaseless rain."8 Cox was specifically referring to the original 189 men of A Company, First Battalion, 5th Marines and their first few days of battle on Cape Gloucester. Nonetheless, the statement is transferable to the entire Division—no other unit would claim otherwise. The men who encountered New Britain's foreign landscape faced a daunting challenge. First impressions of the land were not as striking as D-Day on Guadalcanal, since most of the Division had experienced a contested landing and jungle warfare. Now most of the Division had experience in combat and living in the rainforest. Nonetheless, the beach was among the first memories. Melvin Cruthers recalled the beach, but also the rainforest looming behind it. "We moved out arriving at Cape Gloucester the day after Christmas and the first sight we saw was a muddy beach at the edge of a very dense jungle."9 Luman Slawson recalled his first impressions: "I 4 McMillan, 175. 5 Herschel Cox, Jr., et al. Marines Remember Cape Gloucester World War IIBattle (1996), 58. Manuscript sent to author on February 26, 2006. Also available with the Personal Papers Collection, History and Museums Division, Marine Corps Historical Center. Hereinafter Cox, et al. 6 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 3. 7 George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 2. 8 Cox, etal, 1. 9 Melvin Cruthers, Luman Slawson in Cox, et al, 15. 11 Cox, et al, 7, and for previous citation. 12 First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation, "Appendix 1" to "Annex A," 4, Box 7, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives and Records Association, "Archive II," College Park, MD. The "H" refers to the eastern most landing beach. The damp flat episode is also briefly recounted in Henry I. Shaw, Jr. and Douglas Kane, History of the U.S. Marine Corps Operations in War II, Volume II: Isolation ofRabaul (FMFRP 12-34, Doctrine Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, VA: 2000 [1963]), 321, and in Frank Hough and John Crown, The Campaign on New Britain (Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1992 [1952]), 51. 193 elitism. It also reflects that New Britain's rainforest was as unappreciated by contemporaries as it would later be by historians. The first challenge of the rainforest was traversing it. Warner Pyne related how the movement of artillery pieces over rugged terrain was viewed as a significant accomplishment. He stated that the "11th [Marines] picked up a unit citation here because we did such a great job slugging the guns through the mud. You'd be trying to move through the jungle when you'd find yourself up to your knees, or deeper, in a 1 "\ mud pit." George Peto found that moving through the rainforest equated personal isolation. "Now, jungle fighting is like being in the dark. You only know what is happening to yourself and the guy next to you and the scuttlebutt is as thick as fleas on a dog."14 William Kapp recorded his exhaustion from patrolling in central New Britain towards the end of the campaign. "Mar. 8 Hiked through hills from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. with one stop. No opposition but tired as hell—no water—dug in."15 Anthony Chillemi, a corpsman now with B-l-7, recalled the "slow and exhausting"16 D-Day trek through a small swamp, just east of Target Hill (440) and immediately southwest of Yellow Beach 2. The width of the beach was in direct contrast to bottlenecking paths entering into the swamp. Luckily, no Japanese resistance was found in the swamp as their centers of defense were located in the ridges near Borgan Bay. However, the trek itself was a plight as the "only hardship we encountered in the swamp was the swamp itself and that the lack of a solid surface "forced us to step from tree root to tree root. Forward movement was slow and torturous."17 The swamp water ranged in depth from up to the knee to over a man's head, as remembered by the men. The risk of slipping into the morass was taken seriously, and Chillemi explained that each man was to watch out for the man in front of him. If someone fell "into the depths of water and slime" then his comrade was expected to rescue him. Warner Pyne in Henry Berry, Semper Ft, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 70. 14 George Peto, "Heroes," The Old Breed News, July-August 2005, 33. 15 William Kapp, Bill Kapp's War Notes and Memories (sent to author on February 24, 2006 by W. Kapp's daughter Susan K. Anderson), 30. 16 Anthony Chillemi, "Cape Gloucester, New Britain_December 26, 1943 to Late-February 1944," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 6. Hereinafter Chillemi, New Britain. 17 Chillemi, New Britain, 6. 194 "More than one Marine had to be pulled up out of the muck after missing a foothold."18 When B Company reached the top of Target Hill hours later, they found the knoll "devoid of any growth. If there had been any plant growth, and I'm sure there must have been, it had all been destroyed by aerial bombardment and shell fire."19 Smoldering vegetation produced an obnoxious smoke that "caused your eyes to burn" in combination with the "lingering and nauseating smell of expended gunpowder [which] also hung in the air."20 The heat and humidity of the air did not help, and Chillemi remembered this air as "still." Japanese ground resistance was still absent so B Company set up defenses for the evening. Henry Paustian noted that swamps had a particular odor. "At Cape Gloucester, much of the terrain, starting a hundred yards or so inland, turned into a swamp. The water ranged in depth from a few inches to several feet. These swampy areas had an odor of decay caused by leaves and trash from the mangrove forest."21 Specific smells were so strong and unfamiliar to the Marines that they etched themselves into memory for decades after the experience. Most poignant of all was the rotted or burnt flesh of humans, but spent ordnance, foods, the body, and specific environmental conditions were also odors retained in memory. Henry Paustian revealed some impressions. "The stench of decaying flesh was terrible on all the combat islands. I never got used to it. The smell of the forest—a mixture of decaying vegetation and stale water from the swamps never bothered me." Flora and water might not have been pleasant, but they were preferable to the rot of a corpse and burn of expended ordnances. Beyond smell "clothes and gear became filthy and the smell was aggravated by mold and mildew. This was particularly true on New Britain." To make matters worse, the food smelt no better than the rainforest. "Our 'C rations had an offensive odor. I remember one of our men opening a can of meat and vegetable hash, sniffing it and saying: "I don't know which smells worse this stuff or that dead Jap over there." Henry Paustian also offered his remembrance of the swamp, particularly the yucca plant. "The swampy areas are made up of a heavy jungle of mangroves and 18 Chillemi, New Britain, 6. 19 Chillemi, New Britain, 6. 20 Chillemi, New Britain, 6. 21 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 2. 22 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 4, and for previous two citations. 195 sword like plants, similar to yucca, and other plants and vines that make some areas almost impenetrable."23 Although the central terminal clusters of a yucca plant are full of beautiful flowers, the leaves are strong and razor sharp on both the long edges that converge to a fine point. Bruce Watkins also remarked on traversing a swamp, commenting on the various challenges. "We next encountered a mangrove swamp. This makes for the worst kind of going. We waded through water and muck, sometimes waist deep, stumbling over the multitudinous mangrove roots."24 Sometimes swamps were made even more dangerous by having "several Jap bodies among the muck and 75 mangroves." Veteran Stanley Pitera, asked to recount the first few days of battle, noted that the "only thing I remember about that first day going to the airfield is how swampy and sticky it was. Every time your foot would come out of that slime, it would stink. We saw some dead Japs along the way we went."26 Robert Shedd, recalling the return trek (New Years Eve 1943) of the wounded after Johnson's Ridge, observed that "us who were able, left in a group to go to the Regimental Aid Station. This was a hard trip, as it went through kunai grass, and 77 swamps with water to our waists." Herschel Cox remembered the trek as well, explaining how the walking wounded experienced the challenging and diverse terrain. "It was thick kunai grass, then swamps from knees to waist-deep, holding unseen submerged branches and roots to contend with. .. .The trek to the aid station took a few 78 hours and some of the group were badly wounded and weak, suffering great pain." Their pain magnified when a "sudden movement of slipping in the foul smelling 7Q swamps or snagging one's foot shot more pain throughout the entire body." New Britain has several active volcanoes on it and although the threat of being harmed by a volcano is generally remote, it still does happen. In 1994, Mount Tavurvur and its sister volcano Vulcan erupted and destroyed the city of Rabaul, then capital of Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 3. 24 Richard Bruce Watkins, Brothers in Battle: One Marine's Account of War in the Pacific (independently produced, 2000), 6. 25 Watkins, 7. 26 Stanley Pitera in Cox, et al, 15. 27 Robert Shedd in Cox, et al, 55. 28 Cox, et al, 54. 29 Cox, et al, 54. 196 the Province of East New Britain. Deaths were few, five, and what remained of the evacuated city was looted.31 This forced the construction of a new provincial capital at Kokopo, about twelve miles away.32 Destroying much of Rabaul would have made Tavurvur and Vulcan celebrated heroes to the Allies in 1942. Instead, in December 1943 and January 1944 the 1st Marine Division was treated to rumblings in the earth. In the Cape Gloucester area, Mt. Langila had "a wispy plume of steam" that was ever-present and implied activity (however, Mt. Langila is dormant).33 Melvin Cruthers remembered that his unit was "located at the foot of a mountain that was a volcano and every night around midnight it would rumble and light up the sky and we would have visions of having to run to the beach and try to swim back to the states, or at least some place safe."34 Jim Johnston recalled the volcanic tremors as well: "Sometimes, I suppose when the volcanoes were working, the earth would tremble and make you feel dizzy, like you were losing your balance. The first time that happened, I wondered if part of the island was going to break up and fall into the sea."35 Peter Schrijvers had noted that the importance of active volcanoes lay in that they reminded young men of being in an early stage of the planet's formation. "Earth - boiling and churning - appeared to be still in its formative stages, not ready or willing yet to accept and accommodate people. It gave soldiers the surreal feeling of having been transported far back in time."36 The same could be said for the earthquakes experienced on Guadalcanal. The Marines were given the sense of being immersed in a primordial land, a land stuck in time more than the men themselves being 'transported' to another time period. For those who had not studied the features of prehistorical eras, active volcanoes impressed upon the psyche a sense of being outside cultural, structural, and environmental norms. Most Americans lived away from volcanic areas, except for 30 Please see Klaus Neumann, Rabaul Yu SwitMoa Yet: Surviving the 1994 Volcanic Eruption (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 31 "Aussies ready to evacuate as volcano blows," ABC News Online, 8 October 2006, those in Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast. A volcano's rumbling was yet another reminder of just how immersed in an alien land the men were. When veterans explain their observations of local vegetation, kunai grass is often mentioned in the collective memory. Kunai is a perennial tall grass that grows between two and ten feet. Scientifically known as Imperata cylindrica, kunai is the common vernacular on New Guinea while it is colloquially known in the US as cogongrass, Cogon Grass, and Japgrass.38 It had earned the name Japgrass not from the Pacific War, but because in 1912 "live cogongrass was reported near Grand Bay Alabama, apparently derived from orange crate packing material originating in Satsuma, Japan."39 The problem with Imperata cylindrica for the Marines was not because of its danger of contaminating foreign ecosystems, but that the edges of the blades were sharp and toothed, much like the leaves of the yucca plant. Kunai grass existed in the Gulf States, plus Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Oregon, but was not something people commonly interacted with. Today kunai grass is disliked in the US, being labeled as "plant pest," "noxious weed," "Class A noxious weed," and "Quarantine."40 Pacific Imperata cylindrica hates the shade, hence the commonality of veterans recalling the grass on sun-exposed ridge tops.41 Melvin Cruthers recalled the basic danger of kunai grass on New Britain. "You couldn't just walk through kunai grass without a lot of caution because the grass had jagged edges and would cut you to pieces."42 Kunai grass held additional problems. Veteran Carl Wood commented on the impressive height of the tall grass, stating that the "kunai grass was about neck high on me."43 The height, and then density, of a kunai grass patch had not insignificant effects on combat in the squad war. Trampled kunai Idaho, Wyoming (Yellowstone National Park), Arizona, and New Mexico are the non-West Coast exceptions to active volcanic sites in the continental US. 38 "Imperata cylindrica (Cogongrass)," Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, September 2007, grass revealed Japanese movements, for instance, when the swamp did not. Wood stated that "I just followed paths through the grass made previously by Japs. It was not a trail, but I could easily see that somebody had walked there."44 Tall kunai grass also generated the not insignificant possibility of small groups being separated from each other. Wood recalled a time when "CPL. Ethan Farrar and Sgt. Willard Hendrix.. .started out through the kunai grass, which was nearly head high at that point, to contact a company of Marines nearby. In doing so, they decided to stop for a brief rest. When they did so, they were separated by 10 to 12 feet one from another and could not see each other."45 The chances of being separated in kunai grass, as in a choked swamp or dense rainforest, were generally remote. As associated with tall grass, the fear generated by the idea of isolation was enough to etch itself in the veteran's memory and enforce the view of a hostile environment, even if the threat was minimal. Herschel Cox remarked on the ability of the tall kunai grass, at the summit of Johnston Ridge specifically, to blot out all surroundings. He held that "[d]ue to the height and thickness of the grass, I could not see those on my left or right."46 Veteran Vincent Clay also revealed the blinding affect of kunai grass. "The cover was so heavy. Any movement in the kunai which was seven or eight feet tall was just swaying...I guess you could just see four or five feet a man ahead of you was about as far as you could see."47 Veteran Hubert Strong remembered the view atop Johnston's Ridge, and the trouble with kunai grass. "The terrain was a plain with low hills, covered mainly by low, scattered grass with few areas very dense kunai grass, usually impenetrable by man without a good cutting tool and plenty of time." Henry Paustian remembered that there was something menacing in the grass. "The Kunai grass (head high, course grass on New Guinea and New Britain) harbored fleas that carried Typhus. I believe rats were the hosts for the fleas. Two men in C Company had Typhus. One died."49 Typhus was a serious disease but inoculations nullified it most of the time. Epidemic typhus is Carl Wood in Cox, et al, 26. Carl Wood in Cox, et al, 27. Cox, et al, 32. Vincent R. Clay in Cox, et al, 39. Vincent was known as Russ to friends. Hubert R. Strong in Cox, et al, 54. Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1. 199 derived from an infection of Rickettsia prowazekii which is transmitted by lice. The lice live in the grass before bonding with a passing host, like a none-too-clean Marine. However, vaccination existed and only unknown or particularly deadly strains killed US infantry. The challenges of terrain and vegetation also explained the context of a squad war. A division moving over diverse terrain faced immense challenges of cohesion. The rain often hampered the use of radios and without that form of communication, command and control of even companies was threatened. The density of vegetation atop rugged or spongy surfaces was the larger context to the squad war. In this way, the terrain negated the full impact of damage that modern machinery could bring upon the individual infantryman. In a sense, this was a benefit. The 1st Marine Division did not have to suffer the gore of Peleliu and Okinawa because the terrain did not allow for it. However, the trade-off was that they suffered exposure to the primordial. The Misery of Rainfall ~ Rainfall that reached them the floor of the rainforest was actually a small percentage of what was really precipitating. Estimates for the route that rain water takes, once hitting the upper layer of a canopy, divide the paths as such: about 25% is lost directly to evaporation from the crown of the canopy. Another 40% runs down the trunk and limbs of the trees. The remaining 35% of rain water "can be expected to penetrate directly through the canopy of the forest."51 Aside from data recording problems associated with this ("the usual types of rain-gauge greatly underestimate the total rainfall" ), the veterans' collective memory of extreme amounts of rainfall, compared to what they were accustomed to back home, took in only a fraction of what was precipitating over Cape Gloucester. Jim Johnston often wrote about New Britain in brisk tones, getting to the heart of what the island meant to him and his unit. He explained that New Britain was "[n]ot 50 Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2006), 789, and Concise Colour Medical Dictionary, Fourth Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 739. 51 Kenneth A. Longman and Jan Jenik, Tropical Ecology Series: Tropical Forest and its Environment (London: Longman Group Limited, 1974), In addition, this explains why observers note that the rainforest 'drips,' even well after the rains. 52 Longman and Jenik, 30. 200 a bad place, if you could live in a house by the beach. However, to fight a campaign there during the monsoon season, in some of the heaviest rainfall on earth, is a different proposition." Veteran Luman Slawson echoed Johnston's brevity, claiming that "[w]hat I remember the most was the rain. I was later to learn in college that it was the second heaviest rainfall on earth."54 The rainiest site on Earth cannot be stated for certain as there are several contenders, from the Amazon Basin to Mt. Waialeale, Kauai, Hawaii or Tutenendo, Colombia. However, meteorologists generally concur that "the rainiest place on Earth is probably Cherrapunji, India."55 Cherrapunji's rainfall is genuinely duanting and "holds many of the world's rainfall records. The heaviest rain in a single month happened there - 9,300 millimeters - that's over 360 inches of rainfall."5 That is twice the amount of western New Britain. Without an absolute first place, discovering the second most rainiest place is problematic. Nonetheless, there was wisdom in the instructor's remarks, simply because they stressed just how rainy New Britain was. Numbers would not change the memory of the experience, as when Henry Paustian noted that "rain was a constant on New Britain"57 or when Jim Johnston, even more curt, wrote that it "rained almost incessantly."58 George Peto, evoking strong emotions from his memory of New Britain, claimed that "Cape Gloucester was referred to as 'the Green Hell' and that it was."59 He continued by poignantly reminding that "we landed there on Christmas Day just as the monsoon season started [and] we were there about four months. I do not recall a day we did not have rain."60 Bob Stiles recounted a joke for Henry Berry. "They should have given us submarine pay for Cape Gloucester; there was more water there than at Coney Island."61 Johnston, 47. 54 Luman Slawson in Cox, et al, 16. "What's the rainiest place on Earth," EarthSky, 2008, Where on Guadalcanal, stoicism was bred from potential abandonment, on New Britain, resignation was born of the awful rain. "Once we had taken up these new positions, featureless in my memory except that a narrow but swift little stream swept through the Battalion C.P., I resigned myself to the dreary proposition that I would be wet so long as I stayed on New Britain,"62 wrote Leckie. New Britain had become synonymous with rain and wetness, and stoicism was perhaps the best solution to the decivilizing processes of this environmental adversity. However, stoicism was often punctuated with mild to intense frustration. Rainfall's most negative mental affect was the sheer frustration it caused in some individuals. Robert Leckie recounted an anecdote describing the raging frustration of a comrade due to rainfall: I started to retort, but, at that moment, the sky darkened and the rains fell again. A general cry of rage and despair rose from the beach. We sat there in disgust. Finally the Hoosier got to his feet. "Shoot me," he pleaded. "Why'nt somebody be a good guy and shoot me?" He looked despairingly at the ocean.. .and then glanced down at his own half- dry clothing. "Hell's fire!" he swore, "what's the use of waitin"'-and ran like a madman into the ocean."63 George McMillan recorded a similar story from an anonymous Marine. '"In that hammock,' he boasted, 'I had a pair of dry pants. I treasured them. At nightfall, I would contort myself into the aperture, change my wet pants and sleep on them to dry them. I wouldn't get outside the hammock in my dry pants for the world.'"64 The value placed on dryness was high, so much so that the Marine had insisted that the dryness of his pants was his absolute priority. Alas, one night a Japanese bomber harassed the Marines more than normal. When the man decided to ignore the air raid sirens, his buddy screamed at him to exit the hammock. '"I could hear the banshee whistle of the bomb and I clawed my way out of my hammock and scrambled into the cold, wet mud. The bomb fell about a hundred yards away. I almost cried in rage and frustration. The bomb hadn't hit us and my pants were wet!'"65 Rainfall imparted significant amounts of boiling rage within the Marine, frustration only compounded by the weight of several other environmental adversities, on top of the grind of combat. 62 Leckie, 258. C.P. means Command Post. 63 Leckie, 254. 64 Anonymous in McMillan, 178. 65 Anonymous in McMillan, 178. 202 Rainfall was also an auditory experience, although not that troublesome. Melvin Cruthers recalled that the "rain bounced off our helmets so hard it made your ears ring."66 Robert Leckie remembered that it "was raining and the track was more slippery than ever-and so, our progress was even slower than it had been the day before. To the right, now faintly heard through the rustling of the rain, now inaudible, lay the ocean. These were the only sounds."67 Marines experienced rainfall as the dominant sound on New Britain—yet another reminder of its omni-presence. The affects of rainfall also manifested itself in anti-social behavior. The threat of wetness, and the discomfort that it produced, sometimes created a lack of participation in social events (events necessary for group cohesion and bonds of camaraderie). William Kapp's notes reflected this. For instance, a funeral was skipped. "Jan. 8 Still trying to dry out clothes and gear from flood. Funeral for Hawkins. Rained again and I didn't go."68 Church was also missed. "Jan. 16 Rained hard I didn't think it worth while to go to Battalion for church." Preferred off-hour activities were thwarted. "Mar. 23 We put a roof on Mortar Chow Table. Got mail. Went to bed early because of rain." Output in labor dropped. "Jan 12, 1944 Laid around because of rain in a.m. Wrote Mom, Dot, and Gwen in p.m."69 But rain nonetheless created more labor. "Apr. 70 17, 1944 Rain in torrents. Had to work on shack to keep rain out at sides." And, of course, inconveniences accrued. "Jan. 14 Awakened at midnight for air raid—Damn annoying to hop out of sack into a wet fox hole."71 Rainfall's affects seemingly attempted to destroy the few personal material possessions that the men carried with them. Also, the necessary tools of war that the Marines had to haul through the rainforest, swamps, and tall grasses were endangered by the rain and moisture. Rifles, the most important of all tools, were under constant threat of rotting, mold, and corrosion. Melvin Cruthers remarked that it "would rain so hard at times that it was impossible to lay down, so we would have to stand holding our Melvin Cruthers, Melvin Cruthers, i 204 Items as simple as letters rotted quickly. Robert Leckie wrote that a letter from home "had to be read and reread and memorized, for it fell apart in your pocket in less than a week." George McMillan stated that "[l]etters ripened with re-reading, and were preserved not so much for the specific messages they contained as for evidence that there was some place a drier and better world."81 Here, McMillan suggested that letters were not only the anchors to home, but that they directly reminded the Marines of dryness—a highly prized state in the dripping rainforest. He continued by quoting that letters "fell apart in your pocket after a day or two,' complained a private first class." Letters were no small thing; their importance was because they were the most intimate connection with home. They continued relationships between individuals separated across the vast globe. They were considered essential for troop morale by most military establishments. Their personalized nature allowed retention of individuality in a group lacking privacy and, in a larger sense, in a global conflict of similarly uniformed men numbering in the tens of millions. Of equal importance to letters was some of the Marines' reliance on cigarettes. Robert Leckie held that "a pack of cigarettes became sodden and worthless unless smoked that day."83 But, despite how hard the rain tried, cigarettes were saved, much like other small items when the Marines utilized condoms. George McMillan wrote that the "solution to the problem of tobacco, wallets, fountain pens, watches and knives was to carry them in the rubber sheath of a prophylactic device, sealed by tying a knot in the open end. Thus anything that fit this was protected from the rotting moisture."84 Some Marines had purchased watches in Australia with money saved from months of not being able to spend on Guadalcanal. The war might have been the first time a young man had made regular income in his life, and Australia the first time he could spend it. A time-piece was a commonly sought item, both utilitarian and symbolic of the individual's escape from Depression-era poverty. But delicate, mechanized items were frail in the face of environmental adversity. McMillan asserted that every "man who had one grew fiercely proud of it; but those men who had bragged 80 Leckie, 257. 81 McMillan, 179. 82 McMillan, 179. 83 Leckie, 257. 84 McMillan, 181. 205 in Melbourne of their 'guaranteed' waterproof watches saw these same timepieces corrode with green mold and stop. No watch was New Britain water-proof."85 Softer materials, like wallets, were even more prone to disintegration. McMillan explained that if "a man hoped to keep his valued wallet, filled with pictures of family and girl friend, he had to resign himself to taking it out of his pocket at least once a day to scrape off the blue mold." This was not always enough. "Even with this care, the stitches might rot and the wallet fall apart, spilling out wrinkled and yellowed snapshots." Pictures, like letters, were items of sacrosanct value in a distant, utterly foreign rainforest; the same rainforest that seemingly attacked these items. Textiles, predictably, rotted like other soft materials. Boots were not immune to the rain. McMillan described that "[sjturdy boondockers, the comfortable reverse calf Marine field shoes, the only type of footwear ever issued in the Division while it was overseas, had to be scraped each morning—not for mud, but for vivid blue-green on mold." Scraping mold became a daily occurrence, and as such became normalized. Like boots, socks suffered the same fate. "Socks rotted faster than the quartermaster could replenish them, and many men recall the clammy feeling of bare wet feet in wet shoes."88 Leggings were made problematic and ultimately undesirable because of their ability to trap moisture and feed jungle rot. As McMillan declared, the "laced issue leggings seemed only to hold the water in, and were soon thrown away." Warner Pyne described that "[e]ven our ponchos began to disintegrate,"90 and ponchos were secondary in rain protection only to jungle hammocks. Robert Leckie continued revealing that pocketknife blades rusted, pencils broke, pens clogged and broke. Rifle barrels would have rotted, save the Marines' meticulous cleaning of weapons, and were hung upside down to keep out the rain. Nonetheless, bullets and magazines were compromised if not checked daily and cleaned of mold. Bullets often stuck together in magazines, and machine gunners had to clean their belts continually. Bullets often had to be cleaned, individually, and oiled to insure the proper 85 McMillan, 179-181. 86 McMillan, 181. 87 McMillan, 181. 88 McMillan, 181. 89 McMillan, 181. 90 Warner Pyne in Berry, 70. 206 functioning of the rifle, habits deeply instilled during Boot Camp. Still, the care of individual bullets on New Britain attested to the dominance of rainfall and just how saturating moisture was. Rainfall attacked icons as well. "To symbolize the security of the entire Cape Gloucester area, airfield as well as Borgen Bay, a flag was raised there in the rain. It was soaked before it reached the top of the pole, hung limp as the men slogged away at the end of the ceremony"92 wrote George McMillan. The American flag was not immune and where it was to be used as a symbol of victory, fluttering in the minds' eye, it too succumbed to the rain and did not fulfill poetic imageries. Letters, pictures, and flags, all acting as and representing important connections and symbols, were constructed of soft or textile materials that were adequate back home, but subject to the ills of Cape Gloucester's rain. However, the ultimate indignity seemed to come from how rainfall attacked the body. Jungle rot was the primary assault, but this was on the living. Rainfall continued to plague the body even after death. McMillan declared that "[e]ven the dead suffered from the rain. In the new graveyard at the airfield the sharply spaded mounds that marked each bier were eroded and leveled by rain, and each morning it was necessary for the men who kept the cemetery to go out with shovels and rebuild the mound."93 Maintenance of cultural normalcy, in this case a cemetery, was a daily, time-consuming challenge due to the constant rain. George Peto remembered that rainfall's affects on the dead added to the gore and barbarism that the men already endured from combat. Burying the dead Japanese was an affront to the Marines, a courtesy the hated enemy did not deserve. And so "the dead bodies around the airport were left where they fell...the constant rain bleached the faces [and they were] white gory looking sites." 4 Eventually the exposed bodies became dangerous to the men's health. "After a month the smell and flies were so bad that we were ordered to bury them. The stench was so bad I almost passed out."95 Leckie, 257-258. McMillan, 207. McMillan, 206. George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 2. George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 2. 207 Reportedly, the levels of rainfall became so intense as to alter the very landscape that the Marines toiled on. In one instance, a stream had its course modified by heavy rains. Melvin Cruthers remembered that "during a hard rain the streams would sometimes change their banks. Once we had a mess hall set up some ten to twenty feet from a stream and during this hard rain it changed its banks and flowed right through the middle of the mess hall."96 William Kapp remembered the distinction between terrain elevations, in relation to rainfall. "February 1 Must return because can't get supplies. We take over First Marine positions in hills and sleep in a tent again." The tent must have been a welcomed change, or at least so when compared to the alternative: "Feb. 2 Walked back to old area behind hill 660 for gear and found everything under water. We are glad we are now in the hills." Saturating the soil with rain water meant that things anchored in that soil, like trees, became unstable. Falling trees were not insignificantly dangerous and not purely derived from ordnance explosions. George McMillan reported that there was "an estimated 25 men who lost their lives from the falling trees."99 Twenty-five men out of a total 352 KIA meant that 7.1% of all 1st Marine Division deaths on New Britain were from trees falling, due to either ordnance or overly water-saturated soil. In fact, the "first marine fatality on Cape Gloucester was caused by a falling tree."100 Happening on D-Day, like the fierce storm, this seemed prophetic in retrospect. Melvin Cruthers remembered the saturated soil and the toll it took on the Division. "The soil on Cape Gloucester was top soil of about six to eight feet deep. That kind of soil isn't conducive to good root stability so that when you had hard wetting rains and winds of a typhoon you often had trees uproot."101 Cruthers described a near-death experience relating to a falling tree, and not caused by exploding ordnance. One time to keep out of the rain there were a whole group of us standing in the rain under a large tarp. All of a sudden the low spot that we were standing 96 Melvin Cruthers, in began to have water rushing through so we decided to move over into a little higher ground. In a shuffling manner we all moved in concert about twenty paces to higher ground. All of a sudden an uprooted tree fell across the spot that we had just evacuate. If we hadn't moved I am sure that a number of us would have been killed.102 Donald Fall echoed this, remembering simply that "[m]ore than one Marine lost his life when a tree fell on him. The roots did not have good hold."103 Trees also shattered when contacted by ordnance from mortars or artillery, and wooden splinters then acted as deadly shrapnel. Ultimately, dying from a falling tree, especially when not caused by ordnance (as an instrument of human agency), was just another cruel irony. As Jim Johnston declared, "[o]ne day I saw a tree fall along the edge of a swollen stream. It hit a marine and killed him. How ironic! In the midst of all that war, a man dies from a tree falling."104 Warner Pyne recalled falling trees. "Another menace was those big trees. They were rotten. The shelling and the lightning were always knocking them over."105 The accompanying lightning of a storm, especially for those exposed and dwelling near large trees, generated fear for the young men. Cruthers remembered that "I have never experienced lightning as frightening and loud as those in a typhoon. It was known to strike close and knock the rifles out of your hands."106 Although much of the campaigning on New Britain was mobile, in comparison to holding the perimeter on Guadalcanal, the men still had to make use of their foxholes. Anthony Chillemi remembered the troublesome combination of New Britain's rainfall levels and being in an open cavity in the ground. "It seemed to rain almost all of the time, and it didn't take long for the holes to become mud and water filled basins."107 Life in a foxhole was worse during the night due to the strict policy of non-movement after daylight. This tactic was adopted so as any movement at night could be safely assumed to be non-Marine. Eric Bergerud noted that there "were various tracks, trails, streambeds, and ridgelines that allowed slow, cautious movement. 102 Melvin Cruthers, Infiltration was always possible," despite how thick the vegetation was. The Japanese had a propensity for night harassment. So the troops chose their preferences, Marines attempting to own the day and the Japanese endeavoring to rule the night, a division of time that carried forward with fair consistency for the Pacific War. Not being able to exit a foxhole at night, however, posed a problem for relieving oneself. Chillemi wrote that during the night "you just lay there soaking in the wet and cold. .. .If you had to relieve yourself, you didn't, you stayed and went some other time. Otherwise you used your helmet and dumped the contents over the side with as little noise as possible."109 The effects of rainfall were particularly difficult on the feet. The assault on the soft material of the boots was the first step. Henry Paustian recalled that the men "were issued 'Jungle Boots'—canvas boots with cleated soles—for the New Britain Campaign. They helped in maintaining footing on slick trails, but they were not at all waterproof and soon rotted out. Replacements were not available."110 Anthony Chillemi explained the next step, the assault on the feet proper. For Chillemi, the feet were a particular problem because he remembered not removing his boots for approximately two months while on New Britain. This happened because the potential for harm in bare feet was paramount to the threat of jungle rot. The logic was typical of combat infantry at the sharp end. "No one wanted to be caught with his shoes off if there was a possibility you had to move fast."111 Once afforded the opportunity, taking off his boots revealed the condition of his feet. "The bottom of my feet still had the appearance of a striated and ridged brain surface. Many of the Marines...had the same problem."112 Not surprising then was the men's desire to attain dryness. Here the men worked with what was available, and with what was socially acceptable. Technology and creativity, with tolerance and acceptance, were the men's defense against heavy rainfall and their own unending wetness. Asked to recall the first few days of battle at Cape Gloucester, veteran Leonard Roaen stated that "I can't remember the exact two days we're talking about. It sort of happened so fast and it was over. I do remember it was dry and then 108 Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 348. 109 Chillemi, New Britain, 9. 110 Henry Paustian, letter to author, June 30, 2005, 7. 111 Chillemi, New Britain, 15. 112 Chillemi, New Britain, 15. 210 when it started to rain, we took some sort of action to stay dry but then we became totally wet and stayed wet until almost the full time we were there."113 In his desperation for dryness, George Peto accidentally lightened the mood. Two weeks into the campaign I was tired of shivering and being cold and wet, so I cut a pile of sand bags open, took a dry one out of the center, cut arm holes in it with my K-bar and put it on. In about 15 minutes I was itching so bad, I had to go back to my old dungaree jacket. The rest of the fellows got a good laugh at my expense.114 Herschel Cox noted that comfort was derived from items that were common-place at home but cherished on New Britain. After the Battle of Johnston's Ridge, recuperating in an aid station, Cox recalled the conditions of his short treatment. "About a fourth of the even ground under the tent was under water. With the cots resting unevenly wherever they could be placed. We each laid or sat on a cot, comforted by a wool blanket."115 For Herschel Cox, dryness was the remedy to the challenges of rainfall. "How good it felt that night, being able to stretch out warm and dry and going to sleep."116 New Britain was generally a hot and humid island. However, night time brought a chill, especially for those in a drenched uniform. The men were again struck by an irony. Here in the heat of the South Pacific, they were cold at night from wet clothes. Carl Scott, remembering a cold night, related an anecdote demonstrating that the men's desire to attain comfort did, at times, supercede social norms. "One night, we dug this hole, my buddy and I, usually two men a hole. And, boy, nowadays you wouldn't think of that, we were so cold, we were laying on each other as close as we could. ...once you moved then you'd be cold."117 McMillan cited a corporal who noted that "[y]ou always got cold at night, even there in the tropics, because, I guess, we were always wet."118 Where tailoring sand bags and receiving warm socks were not overly effective, an Army-issued jungle hammock, rubberized and mass produced, a weapon of modern 113 Leonard Roaen in Cox, et al, 17. 114 George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 2. 115 Cox, et al, 56. 116 Cox, etal, 57. 117 Carl Scott, interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 4, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association 58th Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. 118 Anonymous corporal in McMillan, 179. 211 technology set against the wrath of Nature, came through in helping to keep the Marines dry at night. Robert Shedd explained that "much of the time I spent there [New Britain], we were able to use our jungle hammocks for sleeping. If properly hung, they would keep you warm and dry."119 Henry Paustian remembered that jungle hammocks were a welcome bonus when the Division fought under Army jurisdiction. "We used jungle hammocks on New Britain and Okinawa. They were a hammock with a rubberized tent-like awning over the top and a mosquito net around the sides. We used them in the rear areas only. On the lines we slept in our foxholes."120 The patrols on New Britain, like the front on Okinawa, afforded too little safety to risk using a jungle hammock. If the enemy encountered Marines in these hanging rubber bags, the results might be deadly. So, jungle hammocks were an object for the rear, and not always available. Yet because the front was limited to patrols, most in the Division, after the initial battling, got to use the hammock regularly. Jim Johnston recalled the jungle hammock, noting that the "army had issued us jungle hammocks that were carried by headquarters personnel when we were actively engaged or moving. When time and conditions allowed, headquarters company would bring up our hammocks and we could hang them in the bivouac area. They were a welcomed relief."121 He went on, speaking in praise for the technological liberation. "We could string them between trees and thereby get off the wet ground. Attached to each hammock were zipped mosquito netting and a little waterproof canopy that draped over it. The hammocks were superb, very well designed."122 However, there were some problems with the hammocks. "They would keep you dry and out of the mud, snakes, and mosquitoes, as long as you kept them in the proper altitude, horizontal like an airplane. .. .Out of the proper attitude, you could tear it all to hell in a couple of seconds. .. .When you wrecked one you were SOL — shit out of luck."123 Replacements were not forthcoming; the 1st Marine Division was not atop the list of priorities for the Army Quartermaster. William Kapp benefited so much from y Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 2. 0 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 7. 1 Johnston, 62. 2 Johnston, 62. 3 Johnston, 62. 212 his jungle hammock that he named it "Rover Boy." He was even inclined to mention it in his diary. "Jan 5. This new jungle position is good for hammocks. Dug good IOC positions that filled with water soon." His only mention that day, about the surrounding terrain, related to how well it supported his use of the jungle hammock. His second sentence revealed the alternative, the digging of defense holes only resulting in basins of water. Robert Shedd's insights into his memories about rainfall on New Britain provide informative counter-evidence worth exploring. In short, Shedd claimed that rainfall was not an important facet of his memories of New Britain. "Somehow, I don't remember any affect that the rain had on our bodies, or any change of mood."126 This demonstrates how a normalization process occurred for the men, and how things that became so normal could face extraction from memory. Rainfall was extreme, compared to home, but every day, once immersed in the rainforest. As Shedd noted, "I do remember that after I was wounded, it was a few days before an LST was available to take us to the hospital in Nugini. We were kept at the battalion aid station meanwhile. One morning I looked out and the sun was shining. It was pleasant to see, and until then, I guess I hadn't noticed the rain so much."127 That rain became noticed only in contrast to sunshine indicated just how normalized it had become and explains why rainfall, in such a rainy land, can lack retention in the veteran's memory. Also factoring into Shedd's recollection was the temperature of the rain and the process of drying out that occurred quickly enough to counter-balance the wetness. "As I said before, the rain was warm tropical rain and not unpleasant when you got wet. Once it stopped raining, the heat would soon dry you out." However, this assertion was not universal. As George Peto noted, the rains returned quickly and re-soak the newly dried Marine. "The monsoon season starts in December and lasts until May. It rains almost every day. Lots of short duration showers. By the time you dry out, along 124 Kapp, 29. 125Kapp, 23. 126 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 3. 127 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 3. "Nugini" refers to New Guinea and was the contemporary pidgin-English in the region. It is sometimes used today, as in Air Nugini. 128 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 3. 213 comes another shower. Rain is a big factor in war." These two assertions are not necessarily contradictory. Wetness and dryness were more parts of a spectrum than two distinct states. Being wet or dry were both processes being continually engaged on a daily, if not hourly basis. These environmental adversities did not always cause rage, frustration, or forlorn feelings in the individual. The Division's mission was successful, so the mind could re-interpret negative memory. Another factor to consider is that by their very own self-definition, Marines are tough. The fact that these men had volunteered meant that complaining was tolerated only so far until the individual was scorned. In the participants' understanding, being able to deal with adversities is what makes a Marine a Marine. Perhaps, because they survived and won, they might have lost sight on just how challenging the environment was at the time. Would the vanquished then have a different view of the rainfall? Be more prone to hating it? In his epilogue, Eric Bergerud included the last lines from a diary of Japanese Petty Officer named Morita writing from the Stirling Mountains in eastern New Guinea. It is worth repeating. 15 September: Our troops have not arrived for 14 days. I have been waiting patiently, but I am beginning to lose consciousness. ...potatoes...potatoes... my wife.. .my mother. 22 September: Engaged a large enemy force. Lost all of our weapons and have only the clothes we wear. Nothing to eat. 25 September: I have fever and am nearly unconscious but holding on. 26 September: Our forces haven't arrived yet. No use waiting.. .I'm mad. 28 September: I detest rain. (This is the last entry.)130 Mud: Rainfall's Auxiliary ~ Warner Pyne noted that "[i]t isn't the action that stands out the most to me about Cape Gloucester though, it is the awful weather. Rain, rain, rain, every day and night."131 True to the infantry's reliance on rumors, Pyne entertained a minor conspiracy. "Someone said the brass had picked the rainy season to go in because they felt we would surprise the enemy. Maybe so, but the area we fought in became a George Peto, letter to author, May 31, 2006, 5. 0 Anonymous Japanese petty officer in Bergerud, 524, parentheses in original. 1 Warner Pyne in Berry, 70. 214 goddamn masterful mudslide." Part of what made rain so miserable was that so much mud resulted from it. Describing New Britain as a "goddamn masterful mudslide," after noting that rainfall dominated the experience, demonstrates the relation between the two intertwined environmental adversities.133 Henry Paustian shared his feelings on what mud meant to his experience. "The mud on New Britain is high on the list of my remembered worst experiences on the island that ranks among the highest recipients of rainfall in the world."134 Paustian continued explaining some of the adverse affects of mud: "mud was a constant. It ranged from soupy, to pudding consistency, to heavy gummy muck that clung to boots and clothing. Even four-wheel-drive vehicles bogged down. Slick trails were difficult and aggravating on long patrols."135 Leonard Roaen recalled the effects that mud had on vehicles. "The roads were like coral color, and when it rained, hardly anything could make tracts, except for a small vehicle that we somehow got from the Japanese."136 He also noted just how deep the mud got on the "roads," alleging that "[s]ome of the roads were not ankle deep, but knee deep."137 Melvin Cruthers recounted a similar anecdote. "Lucky us we arrived during the monsoon season and the rain and mud there was unbelievable. Tanks became un-operable [sic]. ...With the monsoon and several typhoons during my stay I was wet for over thirty days straight."138 It is not uncommon for the veterans to recount stories about how mud greatly hindered the performance and capabilities of mechanized vehicles, while they themselves were on foot. First, there was a direct contrast between modern machinery, the height of technology at the time, and one of the consequences of heavy rainfall, a Warner Pyne in Berry, 70. 133 For a history of mud in modern warfare, please see C.E. Wood, Mud: A Military History (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2007 [2005]). 134 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 2. 135 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 2. Leonard Roaen in Cox, et al, 17. Leonard Roaen in Cox, et al, 17. 138 Melvin Cruthers, Paustian continued by explaining just how physically exhausting it was for young men to undergo a patrol in the mud. "Men often became so exhausted that they dropped off to sleep immediately when taking a 10 minute break. Squad leaders and platoon leaders had to check their men to be sure they were awake when the break was over. Some men even dozed while marching and made comments that were completely devoid of any sense."140 The enervation from the struggle of movement through deep mud compounded with the sapping of strength from the heat and humidity, not to mention the rigors of patrolling with equipment. Jim Johnston attested that the challenge of mud derived simply from walking. "We had walked miles, during which we had to strain to pull our feet out of the sucking mud to make the next step."141 Melvin Cruthers spoke of at least one positive thing to be derived from the soft soil. Where the rock-solid coral of Peleliu proved to be a deadly challenge by negating the Marines' ability to dig foxholes, this was never an issue on New Britain. As Cruthers commented, "one good thing about this type of soil, if needed and a couple of Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 3. Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 3. Johnston, 51. 216 times I did, you could dig a fox hole with a spoon." Mud was also used in jokes, a latent form of stress relief. The following joke was at an officers' expense, but reflected the troubles of this environmental adversity. Pyne commented There was a joke floating around that went like this: This captain is looking at one of those mud pies when a helmet appears moving through the mud. Then it comes up a little higher and the captain sees a head. "Jeez," the captain says, "you must be in real deep." "Real deep," the Marine replies. "Wait 'til you see the bulldozer I'm driving?"143 Disease ~ Written evidence about the medical experience of the 1st Marine Division on New Britain is scant. As the deputy historian at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, wrote to the author, the various medical histories by the Navy do not specifically mention New Britain. Andre Sobocinski noted: This 4-volume, unabridged history [an administrative history of the Navy Medical Department in World War II (1946)] was written by a team of academic historians during the war. They based their tome on first hand accounts, ONI reports, as well as articles published in The Hospital Corps Quarterly and The Naval Medical Bulletin. Regretfully, and quite surprisingly, there is no mention of New Britain in this history.144 He continued that "I have looked through our dependable World War II sources: The Annual reports of the Surgeon General of the Navy, the unpublished histories of the medical department, as well as the three volume abridged History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II (published in 1953) but there is nothing that specifically relates to New Britain."145 The Army's medical history had only allotted less than a few pages for New Britain specifically. What can be surmised is that New Britain provided little that the Marines did not already meet on Guadalcanal. What mattered, then, was that some lessons did not Melvin Cruthers, 146 Phase IV: Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain - Borgen Bay — Itni River Area and Occupation of Rooke Island, file 12-1.0001/44 (7813-d), 3, entry 427, box 24624, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File, National Archives and records Administration, "Archive II," College Park, MD.3. Referring to January 29, 1944 and the end of the 'Stevenson-Hunt patrol' (two companies from the 1st Marines, January 22 to 29, who patrolled the area southeast of Cape Gloucester). 147 Warner Pyne in Berry, 70. 148 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 4. 218 feet and legs."149 Jim Johnston recounted a unfortunate incident where jungle rot was believed to have caused a death. He wrote, I later saw the disease kill a marine on New Britain. The poor kid began to have patches of a skin fungus were called jungle rot. He stunk badly. He should have been removed from that hot, humid, infectious environment, but he wasn't. Either from ignorance or indifference, he was kept there. The poison from the crud so permeated his system that he died.150 Melvin Cruthers described a graphic scene about some of his comrades' feet. "The continuous dampness caused many health problems such as jungle rot, fungus in the ears, ringworm and typhus. Jungle rot was so bad that some times the guys would remove their socks and the soles of their feet would stick and peel off with their socks. They would have to wrap their feet in rags to make it to sick bay."151 Cruthers concluded that "ringworm would be so bad on some that you couldn't touch any point on their skin without touching a ringworm."152 William Kapp recorded briefly just how crippling feet problems became. "Jan. 31, 1944 Battalion rested because everybody has bad feet and no chow."153 One month on New Britain and a large unit was incapacitated by "bad feet," if only for one day, was Kapp's implication. Melvin Cruthers recalled how fungus infected the men's ears, and with painful results. "Fungus would build up in some of the guys ears to the point that they would wake up at night screaming with the pain."154 William Kapp's again recorded: "Feb. 16 Got my head shaved today and played more cards. Big raid by the Japs. I am getting jittery. And now I have ringworms."155 Melvin Cruthers described his bout with a digestive-tract disease. "Try finding your way at night in the dark jungle to a slit trench with very little time available before 149 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 4. 150 Johnston, 17. 151 Melvin Cruthers, Melvin Cruthers, Historian Richard Holmes wrote of the importance of bathing for the social cohesiveness of infantry. For Holmes, it was the reduction in the hierarchy that triggered youthful fun. He remarked that "[t]he removal of uniform, and the reversion to a natural - and rankless - state reminds men of happier times when they splashed together with their boyhood friends or showered after a game." The function of this was important to social cohesiveness as this "provides time out of war in more than one sense: it not only cleans a grubby body, but it also affords a temporary relief to the hard-pressed mind."165 At least drinking-water was not an issue, as evidenced by Paustian's discussion on the Cape Gloucester water situation. "Trailer tanks of water were generally available when we were in the rear areas, but, generally, they were only to be used for filling our canteens and the jerry cans to be taken to the front lines for replenishing those troops' canteens."166 Again, not washing hands was welcoming medical disorders. In March and April 1944, the 5th Marines moved out to the Willaumez Peninsula, roughly halfway towards Rabaul from Cape Gloucester. As New Britain's climate varied, the 5th Marines were treated to a rest from western New Britain's harsher climate. Key to this new, gentler part of New Britain was natural hot springs. Henry Paustian wrote that on "Talasea, New Britain, some hundred miles or so east of Cape Gloucester, had a much better environment. ...There were few if any swamps. Hot springs surfaced in pools that were almost too hot to enter."167 The flat coast housed the swamps and tidal swamps of the west. However, the raised ground of the peninsula and central New Britain generally meant swamps were lacking. The hot springs were an unexpected bonus. William Kapp recorded the hot springs in his hidden journal. "Mar. 15 Went to sulphur [sic] spring, great. No wonder Japs wanted this place. Listening to Tokyo Rose and the Zero hour."168 Melvin Cruthers summed up that "when you went to get out you were so relaxed that you could hardly move."169 Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in War (New York: The Free Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc., 1986 [1985]), 113. 166 Henry Paustian, letter to author, June 30, 2005, 1. 167 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 5. 168 Kapp, 30. 169 Melvin Cruthers, So daunting was the terrain, rainfall, mud, and biota, that the Marines came to see, and remember, that their time on New Britain was a battle with the environment more than the Japanese. The terrain was too rugged to bring to bear the growing arsenal that America could manufacture by 1943-44, and more to the point, the island too obscure to be prioritized in the grand scheme of Allied resource allocation. It was both because Cape Gloucester was so primordial and because the war was a squad war that quarrelling with environmental adversities rivaled the carnality of combat. Ultimately, environmental adversities forced shifts in tolerance. Jim Johnston wrote: In the course of events, Frenchie had somehow wrecked his hammock also and had no place to sleep. .. .one dark, rainy night when he was wet and cold, he had decided to crap out for the rest of the night under the first hammock he came to. ...Frenchie had crawled into a tight little curl, under Snatch's hammock, to try to keep warm and out of the rain. Snatch didn't know Frenchie was there. Frenchie said he was just getting settled when he heard Snatch unzip the mosquito net on his hammock. Frenchie said he was pretty sure Snatch was going to piss on him — and he did. I asked Frenchie how he reacted, and he said, "I just laid there. It was warm."170 No wonder then that New Britain, the island itself, was written about as an actual participant, an agent of change, and not just a terrestrial formation on Earth's crust. Environmental adversities reduced the men in scope of consciousness and existence, helped strip them of civil culture, and added to the threat of mortality and sense of uncertainly. Although he was prone to descriptive trappings, Robert Leckie concluded that "I mean to say New Britain was evil, darkly and secretly evil, a malefactor and enemy of human-kind, an adversary really...."171 Lieutenant General James Masters asserted that "let me say that the Jap was not the primary enemy" on New Britain but rather the "real enemy was the weather and the terrain." Herschel Cox, not prone to many adjectives, bluntly claimed in conclusion that "[i]t took a special person to • 1 T\ survive this wet piece of green Hell." im Johnston, 63. 171 Leckie, 257. 172 James Masters, Marine Corps Oral History Program, 1981, 113, Box 97, Oral History Section, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. 173 Cox, et al, 58. 222 Chapter Eight By The Thousands: Arthropods and Animals The men of the 1st Marine Division were overwhelmed, both in terms of numbers and in terms of tenacity, by a large array of fauna encountered on Guadalcanal and New Britain. Conversely, the Marines overwhelmed the local fauna. At the intersection of these two powerful forces, abruptly meshed together, exists the previously unexplored interaction between the 1st Marine Division and the fauna of these South Pacific continental islands. That troops sent to the tropics were besieged by insects is no surprise. However, veteran' recollections about their environmental wartime experience, reveal what the literature does not. Fauna were important environmental agents and integral to that experience. The interactions between the men and the local fauna ranged from innocent discovery to sheer misery. For the men, these interactions were mostly negative. These interactions also disclose aspects of the gritty reality of living and fighting in the South Pacific, and larger Pacific War. Marines often developed several negative emotions from their relations with fauna, from fear to anxiety, and even frustration and rage.1 For instance, brazen behavior from a rat seemed to Leckie to increase correspondingly as his personal energy decreased. "We plotted the death of a rat that had become attached to our machine gun pit. We swore we would kill it.... Its habit was to scurry across the gun embrasure.... It seemed the rat grew bolder as we grew weaker from hunger, until in our extremity it actually sauntered across the embrasure. We never caught it."2 Not surprising that frustration was derived from this experience. In an atmosphere of uncertainty, coupled with an adverse environment, something as simple as an annoying rat came to symbolize the overall frustration of the men, not to mention the real perception of torment by the environment. There was no particular challenge for post-war historians to exclude fauna when establishing the literature. While malaria at least had to be addressed, insects and animals were typically not. Aside from disease, fauna was never a tangible factor in a 1 See "Chapter 9: Human Rage" in Peter Schrijvers' The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 2 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 96. 223 battle's outcome. Yet, fauna were integral to the experience of the Is Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain. Their sheer numbers, constant presence, and bold persistence were important factors and reveal information about the men's personalities, larger cultures, and the actuality of daily life in the South Pacific. The Animalia kingdom divides into two major groups, vertebrates and invertebrates.3 Vertebrates, those with backbones, include species that humans easily recognize: birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and mammals (our own class). However, all included, vertebrates make-up only 5% of the Animalia kingdom.4 Invertebrates, those without backbones, comprise the other 95% of the already largest kingdom, around 1.3 million species out of 1.75 million.5 While all vertebrates belong to one phylum (the major taxon below kingdom), invertebrates belong to thirty different phyla. Invertebrates exist as a group because of what the member species lack instead of share. In short, invertebrates are missing backbones specifically, bones generally, and cartilage. The diversity of invertebrates is impressive. All together, invertebrates not only dominate the Animalia kingdom, but numerically lead all organisms.7 The 1st Marine Division encountered countless species of invertebrates in the South Pacific. However, the veterans' collective memory gives roughly equal attention to vertebrates, animals that most people are more familiar with and favor. Guadalcanal and New Britain were not only the South Pacific's meeting-grounds of the 1st Marine Division and their Japanese counterparts, but a daily nexus between humans and wild life. Arthropods ~ Certain species of insects were truly daunting. Their numbers awed the imagination and made every single day a gauntlet for the Marines. Jim Johnston summed up that in warfare they were "constant concerns."8 As such, insects were so foreign, and prevalent, that they were both something radically new and yet very 3 For this chapter, "animals" refer to vertebrates, as "insects" refer to invertebrates. Fred Cooke, ed, et al, The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 15. Hereinafter Cooke, et al. 5 Cooke, et al, 14 and 516. 6 Cooke, etal, 516. 7 Cooke, etal, 516. 8 James W. Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2000 [1998], 129. He also notes reptiles as "a constant concern." 224 normal, like rainfall. It all depended on time, and how the Marine adapted to being the target of the swarms. If his memory retained several insect recollections, then he recalled how overwhelming and persistent they were. If he never mentioned insects, then this might be accounted for because they became normal at the time. Subsequently, insects did not stand out as anything exceptional in elderly memory. In other words, insects were a common everyday occurrence on the islands but also so numerous and relevant when compared to life at home. Similarly, the Marines brought with them little of civilization, and the islands offered even less. This was the context for how insects became an integral part of the wartime experience. Relations with insects divided roughly into two categories: coping with the swarms and surviving the powerful maladies that many insects, as disease carriers and vectors, brought with them. Fighting the swarms was a battle that was never won and the only way to cope was to tolerate. Complaining only went so far because everyone else in the group was suffering the same fate, even the enemy. There were some ways to obtain a reprieve from insects. Insects do not care for the rain as raindrops are large to them—most insects breathe air and suffer the threat of drowning. Insects always seemed to bother the men less during heavy rainfall, provided they were not in an enclosed space with the men.9 However, the Marines were then suffering the rain. A reprieve in rain was welcomed, but it meant insects came out in force, particularly flying bugs. As William Schwacha noted, "it is now noon, the sun is very hot, insects are buzzing about."10 Repellants were considered of little value and netting was problematic beyond the hospitals. Swatting was largely ineffective but instinctive and habitual. The jungle hammock was the most successful defense against the swarms, but was limited to sleep or spare-time. Ponchos also served a similar function in defense but if the Marine huddled in his poncho for too long, he was bound to start sweating profusely. Being wrapped in a poncho or encased in a hammock were both part of the atomizing process that the men were undergoing—the reduction caused by violence and environmental adversities. Effectively escaping insects was coupled with physical insularization. Since insects were spatially everywhere the Marines were, 9 William Schwacha, untitled diary, (copy sent to author by Robert Shedd on March 6, 2006), 17. Pagination by Robert Shedd, 65. 10 Schwacha, 65. 225 the man who desired a reprieve had to create a private space. The jungle hammock was this haven, and was prized as such, although insects did breach it on occasion as even entering and exiting the hammock was a window of entry. Within invertebrates the dominant phylum is Arthropoda. From Greek, arthropod means "jointed feet" and they are distinguished from other invertebrates because of their jointed appendages, segmented bodies, and "tough but flexible exoskeletons, which provide both protection and support."11 Other non-arthropodic invertebrates include species such as worms and octopi, both with no backbone, but no exoskeleton either.12 Within arthropods, insects (class Insecta) is the largest class by a huge margin. Defined in the simplest way as a six-legged invertebrate with three body segments (head, thorax, and abdomen), the Latin word insectus translates into "cut into sections." The largest showing comes from beetles (order Coleoptera), roughly a third of the entire kingdom and a quarter of all known life. But several other groupings, like flies, by themselves outnumber all vertebrates. Other arthropods that are not insects include spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, and crustaceans. The differentiation between insects and other arthropods (or non-insect arthropods) relates to body segments, appendages, breathing, and other detailed technicalities that basically means that spiders are more closely related to crabs than they are to ants. Suffice to say, arthropods are truly evolutionary success stories. It was arthropods who first left the sea (scorpions) and who were the first to fly (dragonflies). They have "adapted to fill virtually every ecological niche on land, in 11 Cooke, et al, 534. Arthropods are sometimes classified as mesofauna, meaning invertebrates of a macroscopic size. In this sense, microscopic refers to extremely small creatures, like single-celled organisms like Protozoa. The terms megafauna (large animals), like mesofauna and microfauna, are meant as discursive shifts in our perception of size. 12 The minority non-arthropod invertebrates include species that have no backbone yet no exoskeleton either, like worms with internal fluid-filled hydro skeletons. These phyla include: mollusks (Mollusca), flatworms (Platyhelminthes), roundworms (Nematodes), earthworms and leeches (Annelids), and coral, sea anemones, and jellyfish (Cnidarians). 13 A fossil of Rhyniognatha hirsti (class Insecta) is the oldest known arthropod at 400 million years old. It is also believed to have had wings, based on its jaw shape. This would make it the oldest living thing on Earth with wings. For a brief story on its (re)discover, see David Derbyshire, "Museum's forgotten fossil 'was first creature on Earth to fly,' Telegraph, 12 February 2004, 14 Cooke, et al, 354. 15 Cooke, et al, 534. 1 Richard Primack and Richard Corlett, Tropical Rain Forests: An Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Company, 2005), 198. Biomass refers to the amount of individuals in a species, as opposed to diversity within taxonomical ranks. 17 Primack and Corlett, 198. 18 Primack and Corlett, 198. 19 Primack and Corlett, 198. 20 Cooke, et al, 569. 21 Cooke, et al, 569. 227 their larval stages. Veteran Ore Marion remembered the gruesome role of flies and maggots on Guadalcanal. In the jungle when a man is killed the flies attack him by the millions right away. The maggots are there three or four hours later, moving so that the body moves slightly. It's a horrible sight: the maggots are in and out of the mouth, nose, ears, eyes. Day two and three the body starts to swell. The gases that make it swell stink like hell. In some cases the corpse bursts through the uniform, penis sticking up like a huge erection. On day four or five the swollen body, full of maggots, and oily-like, burst and, Jesus, what a horrible stench.22 Maggots were the symbolic embodiment of the jungle's ability to decompose a body rapidly (due to heat and humidity), and provided one of the most graphic sights. Sympathy for the Japanese was not expected, but seeing a comrade's body undergo decay in the jungle was emotionally taxing. Flies and maggots took over the exposed body. If the men did not reach their comrade, he then belonged to the Dipterans—a manifestation of the environment's dominance, even in death. However, flies were not the only carrion-feeder. Ore Marion continued, in his interview with Eric Bergerud, to claim that "[y]ou haven't lived until you go to retrieve a friend's body that has been lying in the jungle rotting and have one of those great rats come slipping out of him where it has been eating tender parts."23 The flies of Guadalcanal and New Britain, in addition to their normal breeding processes, were fortunate for a short period of time to have a sharp increase in the number of dead and exposed mammalian bodies in which to lay eggs. Exposed Japanese were more common than American, but sometimes specific combat situations negated the Marine policy of removing their dead comrades. It might seem counter intuitive that the living risked themselves for the dead, but the policy entrenched in every man's mind the comforting fact that his body, if it came to that, would not be left to the Japanese or the elements. The Marine Corps strongly believed that this produced greater elan. Regardless of this, and the fact that the Marines frequently buried the Ore Marion in Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), Bergerud, 85. The bursting of the body is due to the general pattern of larvae 'escape response' when faced with uncomfortably high temperatures. In this case, in the human body, which has been warmed by the heat produced by the maggots themselves and the weather [Bernd Heinrich, The Hot-Blooded Insects: Strategies and Mechanism of Thermoregulation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 401 and 409]. 23 Ore Marion in Bergerud, 85. 228 Japanese dead, there were often enough exposed bodies to entice flies to the battlefield (human waste was also integral). What carrion-feeders came to represent was the graphic response to death by the environment: decomposition. There would have been little consolation if Marines were told that flies are an important group for pollinating in the rainforest or that they are integral to the food- chain or that they are important in decomposition. In fact, it was their role in decaying that was the problem. The vast majority of Marines expected a proper Christian burial and loathed the idea of having their bodies undergo such a graphic decomposition. American culture, in general, preferred burial, and this practice was often highly ritualized. A proper burial was sacrosanct in both civilian and military culture, and it was as grotesque as it was disrespectful to have a brave, young warrior's sacrifice completed as a decaying body writhing with maggots. David Slater remembered maggots. "When something was dead, maggots seemed to spring from nowhere, sometimes in great mass. In fact, in my innocence, when I first saw this, I believed the corpse was covered with rice (until the grains moved!)."24 Marines learned in time that, despite how grating the idea of burial for the hated enemy might be, leaving a food source for Dipteran development was not prudent. Recalling Cape Gloucester, Donald Fall noted that "death has a smell. I once saw two Japs lying side by side as we entered an empty village while on patrol. At first we thought they were asleep as their bellies moved. As it turned out they were full of maggots.25 Henry Paustian remarked that flies were drawn to more than just exposed bodies. He explained that maggots were "of course plentiful" but that "corpses, slit trenches, and other filth provided ample sustenance." Paustian asserted that "I hated flies, although the diseases they may have carried were not as apparent as mosquitoes with their malarial parasites. Swarms of flies were active around the many corpses, slit trenches (latrines) and other filth. They were very aggressive. It was impossible to keep them away from any food being consumed."27 After the Battle of Tenaru River, Robert Leckie swam the creek to souvenir-hunt across the stream. He wrote that "[d]ead bodies David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2005, 2. Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 2. Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1. Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1. 229 were strewn about the grove. The tropics had got them already, and they were beginning to spill open. I was horrified at the swarms of flies; black, circling funnels that seemed to emerge from every orifice: from the mouth, the eyes, the ears. The beating of their myriad tiny wings made a dreadful low hum." The audacious presence of flies and maggots were an environmental adversity that stung culturally as much as it annoyed and medically endangered. If burial was not possible, then the men had to suffer the symbolic assault and grotesque sight of their buddy's decomposition. Robert Leckie revealed his impressions of the torment of flies. Their persistence on Guadalcanal was incredible. "What bitter desperate anger at the sight of blood from a barbed-wire prick, and the hopeless foreknowledge of the flies that would be upon it." Marines often had exposed wounds, and blessed with good vision and the need to feed on liquids, flies were drawn to those lacerations. Leckie posited a solution to this, instincts. "Only constant motion kept the greedy, filthy flies away."30 Escape was contemplated; but like claiming rainfall as a solution to bugs, Leckie noted that different Dipterans preferred different environs, and so escape from one was not necessarily freedom from another. On a Guadalcanal ridge, Leckie celebrated that they "had outclimbed the mosquitoes." Unfortunately, now "the flies fed on us unceasingly."31 Flies and mosquitoes defined tenacity. David Slater recalled that "[fjlies, of course everywhere. I recall one of my comrades sitting on a log eating a ration, spitting a fly out of his mouth, saying, 'just because you've been in some dead Jap's mouth, don't think you can come in mine.'"32 The Marine's response in the anecdote represents the only viable solution to the swarms: tolerance. The alternative was frustration, even rage, and many did succumb to this. Disease aside, mosquitoes (family Culcidae; anopheles is a particular genus) were as pesky as flies. The hum of their wing-beats was audible, and annoying, to the men. One mosquito's hum went unnoticed in the jungle experiencing the sounds of rainfall, animal calls, and combat. By the thousands, though, the wing-beats magnified. Henry Paustian pointed out that flies supplied this annoyance, as well as mosquitoes, 28 Leckie, 88. 29 Leckie, 115. 30 Leckie, 115. 31 Leckie, 115, and previous citation. 32 David Slater, letter to author, May 5, 2006, 2. 230 and "could drive a man to distraction with their high pitched whine—especially at night."33 Mosquito bites abnormally swelled the skin at the point of incursion. Sometimes, a man was bit so often that large swaths of his skin swelled. Remembering Cape Gloucester, Carl Scott said the "mosquitoes were terrible. I mean, my eyes were almost swollen shut."34 Fireflies made an impression on some Marines. Fireflies (family Lampyridae) are actually beetles, not flies, and are popularly known because of their impressive bioluminescence. Both the adults and larvae have a glow, "producing light via a chemical reaction while giving off little heat."35 Scientists are not fully sure what the glow is for, but surmise that for the larvae ("glowworms") it serves as "a warning to predators of their unpleasant taste" and for adults it is used "in a species-specific pattern to attract mates."36 In the black of the jungle night, the Marines and the Japanese out in the jungle strained their eyes for any sign of the enemy. In this context, the patterned light of a firefly often acted as a false alarm. Sometimes it was discerned that the glow was from fireflies, which are not unfamiliar to North Americans and the Japanese. However, confusion sometimes resulted. David Slater remembered the interplay between the glow of fireflies and false fears of the Japanese infiltrator. Early on in December on Guadalcanal, flashing lights in the jungle caused unease for some in the 9th Defense Battalion, freshly arrived. Biggie, the sergeant, had been called up to the front by an excited Paddie reporting Japanese flashlights. Slater recalled that "Biggie strained to glimpse glimmers of Japanese squeeze-operated flashlights, but saw only the flitting of pulsing fireflies. 'Paddie, you ignorant shitbird, ain't you seen a firefly before?'"37 If the mind desired temporary relief from the horror of battle, and distractions in the combat zone were few, focusing on wildlife sometimes provided that relief. Subsequently the experience etched itself into memory. William Schwacha wrote 33 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1. 34 Carl Scott, interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center, August 4, 2005, 1st Marine Division Association 58th Annual Reunion, Kansas City, MO. 35 Cooke, et al, 564. 36 Cooke, et al, 564. 37 David Slater, "Jungle Vignettes," A Taste of War: A sort of memoir of experiences in my service with the USMC 9th Defense Battalion, Fleet Marine Force May 1942 to November 1944 (sent to author October 2006), 1. 231 Once while an air-raid was going on, as I lay in my hole, I noticed a little ant try to climb up the steep dirt side, slowly he went, having climbed six or seven inches he paused, at that very moment the bombs fell, the earth trembled, grains of sand trickled in, the little brown ant lay next to my thumb, more bombs fell, he remained still. After the enemy planes passed, I crawled out, that little ant helped me pass those dreaded few minutes.38 Schwacha attributed the individual ant to aiding him through a difficult time. Despite that this might be more literary than actually so, it reveals the importance of fauna to the wartime experience in the South Pacific. Availability and creativity combined so as the men made use of what was around—in lieu of culturally familiar structures, customs, and activities. "I watched a fire-fly dance about, somehow I seemed to forget about the battle. My mind trailed across the many miles to home and America, where I knew it was peaceful." Certain species acted as a symbol of innocence for Schwacha, Nature being conceived as the opposite of war. Flightless insects were no less prevalent than Dipterans, even if terrestrially limited. Primack and Corlett noted that ants (family Formicidae) differ considerably from other arthropods because "they form long-lived colonies with overlapping generations and have a division of labor between fertile queens and sterile workers."40 They continued to posit another way to conceptualize ants when they wrote that in "some ways the whole colony acts as a single 'superorganism,' with an ecological impact at least as great as an individual vertebrate."41 Social insects (ants, termites, wasps, and bees) make up "less than 2% of known insect species" yet "they account for a large fraction of insect abundance."42 Citing two other studies, entomologist Bernd Heinrich noted that in rainforests "ants may account for nearly a third of the entire biomass."43 Primack and Corlett cited a Neotropical (Central and South America) example stating that "it has been estimated that social insects (mostly ants and termites) account for around 80% of the total insect biomass."44 The presence of ants in memory reflects their abundance in actuality; William Schwacha claimed there were "little 38 Schwacha, 111. 39 Schwacha, 92. 40 Primack and Corlett, 206. 41 Primack and Corlett, 206-207. 42 Primack and Corlett, 207. 43 Heinrich, 323. 44 Primack and Corlett, 207. 232 brown ants by the thousands." The men might have been surprised if told that they were witnessing only a tiny portion of the total amount of ants, as "most species are small and secretive" and many live strictly subterranean lives. Nonetheless, enough species live on the jungle floor and plant surfaces that the men were bound to interact with them, especially since Formicidae tend to be highly aggressive to foreign invaders of their territory. Anthony Chillemi recalled ants on Guadalcanal's trees, and that the experience of their bites was painful. He wrote of a particular tree that "wasn't the place to lean. In a few moments I began to experience piercing, painful sensations all over my body. I had sat in a spot occupied by fierce biting ants. The ants overwhelmed me, I couldn't brush them off. In what seemed like an instant, they were inside my clothes and all over my body." 7 Chillemi disrobed instantly and tried to remove the ants while their incisions "felt more like stings rather than bites."48 Melvin Cruthers had a similar experience. Understandably wanting to diversify his diet with local fruit, Cruthers explained that "I was wearing a jungle one piece suit and I secured, I thought, all openings to climb up the tree and throw down some fruit from a grapefruit tree and I couldn't get back down fast enough and disrobe completely to remove all the ants that had penetrated the suit and was doing a job on me."49 The territoriality of ants halted his diet diversification. Ants also interrupted Cruthers' attempt to rest for a few minutes, one time on New Britain. "I sat down on a mound of earth one day to relax and to my dismay discovered it was an ant hill. I was reminded very quick and ended up disrobing again. I sure did a lot of disrobing in the middle of the jungle on Cape Gloucester."50 To the Marines, ants seemed to prefer fruit trees, from grapefruit and orange to lemon and lime; Formicidae and Marines were both drawn to nutritious and delicious fruits. Cruthers concluded that "naturally we were starving for fruit but 45 Schwacha, 106. 46 Primack and Corlett, 210. 47 Anthony Chillemi, "GuadalcanalAugust 7, 1942 to December 9, 1942," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 38. 48 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 38. 49 Melvin Cruthers, 51 Melvin Cruthers, Henry Berry, Semper Fi, Mac: Living Memories of the U.S. Marines in World War II (New York: Quill/William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996 [1982]), 96. 58 Thomas Barry in Berry, 96. 59 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 4. 60 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005, 4. 61 Robert Shedd, letter to author, October 1, 2005,4. 62 Leckie, 256. 63 Leckie, 256. 64 Leckie, 256. 235 sense normal. The primordial context allowed for such frightening experiences, just as those very experiences came to define the primordial. Leckie articulated that the "puffing of my lips and eyes symbolized the mystery and poison of this terrible island."65 Technically, spiders and scorpions are not insects. They are arthropods, but have significantly different body structures that set them apart from 'true' insects. Land crabs (subphylum Crustacea) also fall into the non-insect arthropodic category, along with centipedes and millipedes (subphylum Myriapoda) and mites and ticks (class Arachnida)—all of which differ from the tri-segmented, six-legged structure of flies, mosquitoes, ants, and so on. For a basic comparison, spiders have two segments and eight legs. Mouth pieces also distinguish these critters. While beetles chew, spiders and scorpions use their venom to digest prey—that is, the venom courses through the victim's body in preparation for consumption, a process called external digestion. Afterwards, the spider drinks the victim. Taxonomical and physiological differences aside, all these creatures performed similar functions for the Marines. Spiders and scorpions scared the men, both because of the natural instincts of primates and because of the exaggerated sizes relative to North American species. These interactions with spiders added to frayed nerves and further entrenched the foreignness of the land. Unfortunately, it is problematic to determine why land crabs act the way they do. As zoologist Warren Burggren and biologist Brian McMahon sum up, "[w]e really know almost nothing about the behavior of most land crabs, including the most common species."66 It is known that there are 42,000 species within subphylum Crustacea, that most crustaceans are aquatic, and that only a minority has adapted to terrestrial life. They share traits with other arthropods: "segmented body, jointed legs, and an exoskeleton" but differ in their "shield-like carapace" and intimidating chelipeds (claws). Land crabs (order Decapoda) are roughly one-fourth of all Crustaceans. " Leckie, 257. 66 Warren W. Burggren and Brain R. McMahon, Biology of the Land Crabs (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 137. 67 Citations from Cooke, et al, 546. Chelipeds (claws) define subphylum Chelicerata. 236 Anthony Chillemi pointed out that Guadalcanal "teemed with land crabs who seemed constantly on the move."68 Robert Leckie held that it "seemed that almost every night.. .we would hear the thunderous progress of a land crab through the brush."69 Like a bird's squawk or fireflies' light, the clatter from land crabs spurred false alarms about Japanese infiltrators. Donald Fall explained that "I recall crabs came out at night. I was never bothered by them except when it appeared that they crawled [up into the palm fronds. Did not know if a Jap sniper was setting up for daylight."70 Locomotion aside, some Decapods are known to be "noisy crabs" because they drum and or click their body parts together (for reasons unknown).71 The mysterious noises of the jungle were many, with land crabs making up a significant portion of it. Robert Shedd observed that land crabs never appeared fearful of the men. Their fearlessness, and sheer numbers, combined with incentives to achieve a close proximity for warmth and food, made Decapods noticeable both at the time and in memory. "One time I was in a fox hole and it was raining hard. There was a land crab in his hole and he kept nudging me. But there was no way I was getting out of that hole then" remembered Robert Shedd. Melvin Cruthers also recollected the near-affectionate nature of land crabs. He described that "land crabs along the beach were the size of dinner plates and had one very big pincer. At night you would wake up to the sound of bubble blowing - it was a land crab next to your face and even though you would like to swat it away you didn't want to take a chance of being grabbed by that pincer."73 When critters seemed to give anthropomorphicized attention to the Marines, the anecdote tended to stand out in memory. The Marines also used land crabs to play tricks on each other. Depositing a land crab under a comrade's mosquito-netting became a common practical joke on Pavuvu, and experiments with this started earlier. Ralph Evans, recalling the brief but violent fighting on Tulagi, noted that "Land crabs [were] very large and aggressive. A menace during battle, [as they] would fall into a Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 31. 69 Leckie, 103. Guadalcanal. 70 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 1. 71 Cooke, et al, 546. 72 Robert Shedd, letter to author, November 30, 2005, 2. 73 Melvin Cruthers, Ralph Evans, letter to author, May 2, 2005, 1. 75 Melvin Cruthers, Brownell and Polis, 206. 1 Brownell and Polis, 3. 2 Brownell and Polis, 3 and Cooke, et al, 536. 3 Brownell and Polis, 3. 4 Brownell and Polis, 3. 5 David Slater, letter to author, October 1, 2006, 1. 6 Leckie, 236-237. 239 Just being able to compare a spider to an Ml helmet illustrated the exaggerated size of the creature. Biota in the South Pacific always seemed to be of greater size. Melvin Cruthers explained that "everything there would grow way beyond what we were familiar with at home."87 He recalled that "butterflies would be the size of dinner plates and very beautiful." Spiders specifically "would get very large and wove large heavy webs." The men tended to remember the spiders' webs as just another source of grime on their body and clothing. On Guadalcanal, members of the Myriapoda subphylum caused their own trouble for the Marines. Myriapods divide into four classes, the two most famous being centipedes (Chilopoda) and millipedes (Diplopoda). The difference between these two similar classes is that, as carnivores, centipedes will bite humans when feeling threatened. Millipedes, as herbivores, curl up into a coil when in perceived danger. Millipedes also have two pairs of legs per body segment, whereas centipedes have one pair per segment.89 Having four legs per segment means that millipedes are faster runners and stronger in burrowing than their peers.90 Millipedes have been known to "secrete defense body fluids.. .that may discolor and burn human skin.91 Centipedes are venomous and "can deliver a nasty bite even to humans." For the men these differences went unnoticed. However, their anecdotes give clues to which Myriapoda they encountered. David Slater recalled that a "big pain came from things like millipedes, whose myriad legs had sort of hooks at the end. If you had the misfortune of having one of those walk across some exposed skin while taking your ease on the ground, you wound up with an infected track that ulcerated."93 The series of Melvin Cruthers, Worms are invertebrates but belong in their own categories separate from similarly shaped Myriapods and all other arthropods. The culprit in the story, described as going "into a tight circle," was most likely a millipede employing its defense excretion. Cramers' 'bite' was a not an uncommon occurrence for the men of the 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific. Colonel Ralph Wismer, who saw duty with the 7th Marines on Guadalcanal, recalled one time in a dugout when himself and a comrade had a run in with an aggravated centipede. "One of the lads tossed me a blanket, a couple of blankets, and I guess there was a centipede in one of them. It got the chap next to me on the chest and he got up...beating himself. The next thing I know I've got this stinging sensation on the back of my neck. It was a centipede about yeah long (indicating about 8 inches); it was a nasty brown job."98 The regimental surgeon was unsure what do with Wismer's bite and when morphine did not work, "sucked it just like a snake bite." 94 David Slater, letter to author, October 1, 2006, 1. 95 Hopkin and Read, 36, and Goddard, 137. 96 Ebeling, Urban Entomology, and Goddard, 137. 97 Melvin Cruthers, Animals ~ Taken all together, classes mammalia, aves, sauropsida, amphibia, and all fishes are a numerical minority on Earth, both in terms of species diversification and in biomass." Still, vertebrates are the most described biota by scientists and easily recognizable. Being more identifiable, veterans were apt to describe animals more than all other biota. Animals tended to be numerous and conspicuous. They were also relatively unaccustomed to a strong human presence which encouraged contact. There were about 100,000 Melanesians on pre-war New Britain, but typically concentrated in the east towards Rabaul. However, certain animals had reasons to fear locals: cuscus had furs used in headdresses and bilums, jewelry was obtained from the teeth of fruit bats by a specific tribe, and the skin of monitors were "traditionally stretched over a hollow log to form a kundu drum."100 Along with crocodiles, wild pigs were one of the few larger animals that the Marines encountered. Although, unlike crocodiles, pigs (family Suidae) had been introduced into Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific.101 Marines were strongly discouraged from shooting animals that the Melanesians tended; but feral pigs were fair game and even sought after. With mundane diets, Marines, who many were accustomed to hunting in their youths, reverted to hunting to supplement rations. There were some cows on Guadalcanal left over from the Japanese attempt at ranching, but if not in Melanesian care, fresh red-meat was reserved for pilots. So, wild pigs and game fowl were the typical targets for hungry hunters. William Schwacha recorded that "it is now late November, our food supply is long since dwindled away. Again we are hungry and no food. .. .1 spotted one little wild pig about 20 yards in front of me just moseying 1 flO around paying no heed to us. We stopped I took aim with the rifle and fired." Anthony Chillemi recalled that on Guadalcanal there were "groups of wild boars wandering about the island."103 Combined with the march of land crabs ("who always seemed constantly on the move") these species created a considerable racket, 99 Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes are scientifically known as the Chordate subphylum Vertebrata. Sauropsida is the modern term for Reptilia (class). 100 See "Terrestrial Life," Tourism West New Britain, 2008, i r\n 1 OR rat." Peto continued that on New Britain this "was the only place I ever saw them." Melvin Cruthers recalled Chiroptera on New Britain. "The trees would grow one to two hundred feet high and would house all kinds of birds, bats and animals. At night fruit bats would take off and make a horrible racket through the branches and when on the front lines of combat it didn't do much for your nerves."109 Bats contributed to already frayed nerves by complicating audible detection of the Japanese, essential in jungle 104 Richard Bruce Watkins, Brothers in Battle: One Marine's Account of War in the Pacific (independently produced, 2000), 5. 105 George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 3. 106 With the ability of flight, bats were able to arrive at distant Pacific islands that no other mammals independently reached (Cooke, et al, 92). It is in their conquering of flight that has made bats a global success. Their main ecological role in the tropics, much like birds, is that they are "agents of pollination and seed dispersal for tropical trees" (I. M. Turner, The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical Rain Forest (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 131). 107 George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 3. 108 George Peto, letter to author, May 31, 2006, 6. 109 Melvin Cruthers, As ecologists Richard Primack and Richard Corlett note, "In Australia and New Guinea, marsupials still dominate, but there are no longer any really large species." The relatively small size of islands dictated this pattern, as did stretches of ocean that acted as barriers to immigration. Larger animals from Australia, however, did make it to several Pacific islands, particularly the New Guinean area and on other Gondwanic shards. Early human settlement in the South Pacific was not of the mind for environmental conservation. Early Melanesians manipulated their landscape and "[l]ike Australia, a number of species of megafauna became extinct, most likely because of human activities" Don Garden, Nature and Human Societies Series: Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2005), 348. 111 Wanda Burnett, "What the Fighting Yanks See," The National Geographic Magazine (Vol. 86, No. 4, Oct. 1944), 453. Pacified Guadalcanal refers to mid-February 1943 onwards. 112 Primack and Corlett, 100. 113 Bergerud, 72. Even flora produced unsettling noises in the dark. Melvin Cramers recalled that on New Britain "[fjhere were rubber trees that had huge leaves that would come loose and flutter back and forth making noises at night that would also give you quite a start" (Cramers, 2). 244 indistinguishable of the actual agent producing the sound. Anthony Chillemi recalled mysterious sounds one night on New Britain. One night, while sound asleep in the hammock, I was startled awake by something striking the top. I lay nervously awake for some time until the same thing happened again. By this time I was thoroughly shaken and afraid to move. I wasn't about to move around in the dark. Furthermore, I got little sleep. The following morning, a close inspection of my hammock top revealed a collection of droppings from some tree dwelling animal.114 The actuality of the threat was meaningless when sound stimulated the imagination and produced instinctive fears and anxieties. Submerged in the unknown, Marines found their senses constantly enthused by something new. The strangest of these tended to be from fauna. George Peto declared that "the birds in the tropics were beautiful."115 The Marines were treated to the visual splendor of birds of paradise and, subsequently, these creatures etched themselves into memory. 6 The men were also subject to Nature's klaxon. Acting as perimeter alerts, these vocally-expressive birds influenced the tactical reality of patrols, especially smaller patrols on both Guadalcanal and New Britain which demanded acute stealth. Squawking birds did not tip the scale of battle, but they made the potential for enemy alertness significantly higher and diminished the chance for surprise. Those most attuned to bird calls, or the abrupt silence of birds, increased their likelihood of success during patrols. Due to the ever-changing methodology of taxonomy, no concrete numbers for animal species can be concretely claimed. However, the generally accepted classification for ornithologists rests bird species at about 9800.117 Compared to mammals at 4800, amphibians also at 4800, reptiles at 7800, and fish at 20,000, birds Anthony Chillemi, "Cape Gloucester, New BritainDecember 26, 1943 to Late-February 1944," Navy Blue & Marine Green (compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005), 14. 115 George Peto, letter to author, May 31, 2006, 6. 116 Birds of paradise, not hyphenated, refers here to all parrot-like tropical birds. Birds-of- paradise, hyphenated, refers specifically to the Paradisaeidae family. For the Marines, all birds of paradise were generally referred to as "parrots" or "cockatoos." 117 Les Beletsky, Birds of the World (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 474-475. Ornithology is the study of birds. The 1st Marine Division's most famous memoirist, E. B. Sledge, became a Professor of Biology (an ornithologist) after the Pacific War. His recollections of birds on Peleliu, Pavuvu, and Okinawa are brief but insightful. 245 are the second most diverse and numerous group of vertebrates.118 The men of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain undoubtedly saw and heard hundreds of species of birds, and came to remember them well. Numbers alone dictated that the Marines were bound to interact with birds of paradise. Parrots specifically are the third largest of all bird families, estimated at 331 species. For comparison, cockatoos (family Cacatuidae) are estimated at twenty-one species, birds-of-paradise (family Paradisaeidae) at forty-four, and hornbills (family Bucerotidae) at fifty-four.120 These species live mainly in equatorial regions. New Guinea specifically contains a disproportionately high number of parrot species, despite having low numbers of overall bird species when compared to equivalent parts of Africa and South America. For instance, the entire Amazon Basin has fifty species of 1 99 parrots while New Guinea alone has forty-three. Birds of paradise are all relatively large in size and brightly colored—so they are more likely to be seen by humans. They are conspicuous where smaller birds are easily over looked. This, in part, is due to birds of paradise being frugivores. Insectivorous birds are drab in color and small in size, coordinating with their food. Frugivores are brightly colored and often physically large, so that they can handle fruit, included some large species of fruit. For these reasons, "most birds seen by the casual observer are likely to be frugivores."124 In addition, birds of paradise, over the millennia, found their larger sizes equated less predation. Without predators, parrots evolved to "make more use" of their bright colors for attracting mates and threatening fellow suitors, making them more eye-catching. As some specialists sum up, the majority of "the most spectacularly colored rain forest birds are frugivores."125 Beletsky, 474-475. Amphibians and fish probably have higher numbers because of their affinities to water. Water exploration is problematic for scientists and limits human knowledge of these ecosystems. These numbers also make sense when considering that birds, amphibians, and fishes can make use of a third spatial dimensions (up and down, in water or air). 119 Beletsky, 481, and 151, the two largest groups are New World flycatchers, estimated at 425 species, and hummingbirds, estimated at 335 species. 120 Beletsky, 157, 305, and 211 (respectively for cockatoos, birds-of-paradise, and hornbills). 121 Primack and Corlett, 175 and 148. 122 Primack and Corlett, 148. 123 Primack and Corlett, 143. 124 Primack and Corlett, 143. 125 Primack and Corlett, 143. 246 Birds of paradise are generally territorial. This directly relates to their various mating patterns, but meant that Marines were not just intruding on some parrot's plot, they were invading a territorially-minded species. As ornithologists Bridget Stutchbury and Eugene Morton stated, the males "must defend their territories from frequent and sexually-motivated intrusions, even after territory boundaries are well established."12 Stutchbury and Morton noted that in "the tropics year-long territory defense is common."127 This means that birds of paradise instinctively think in terms of "their territory." Although physically attacking the Marines was not an option, parrots expressed themselves audibly. "Bird song is an attempt to manage the behavior of another, for instance, to keep an intruder from annexing a portion of a territory." Although countless species of vertebrates and invertebrates can be considered noisy, parrots, as with most birds of paradise, are truly klaxonic. Acuteness to foreign sounds and sensitivity to producing noise was engrained into patrolling troops. For instance, an after-action report for New Britain stressed the need for silence on patrols. "Both officers and men must be taught the absolute necessity of silence on patrol in order to surprise the enemy and not being surprised; there is no excuse for either 190 officers or men speaking above a whisper unless engaged with the enemy." Parrots were also attuned to foreign noise and expressed themselves audibly to fellow birds. As scientists note, "[p]arrots are very social birds. They squawk loudly 1 Of) and frequently, and are heard more readily than observed in the wild." Several species of birds of paradise are quite loud. For instance, Hornbills are known for their squawking. "The sounds hornbills generate are almost as impressive as their striking looks—not only their far-carrying croaking and booming calls but also the loud 1 Bridget J. M. Stutchbury and Eugene S. Morton, Behavioral Ecology of Tropical Birds (San Diego: Academic Press, 2001), 61 and 61-78. 127 Stutchbury and Morton, 61. 128 Stutchbury and Morton, 80. 129 Phase IV: Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain - Borgen Bay - Itni River Area and Occupation ofRooke Island, file 12-1.0001/44 (7813-d), "Annex H," February 20, 1944, 4, entry 427, box 24624, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File, National Archives and records Administration, "Archive II," College Park, MD. 130 Cooke, et al, 296. 247 whoosh-whoosh-whoosh noises they make with their wings as they fly."131 Overall, parrots "are known for their loud, screeching calls."132 Anthony Chillemi remembered the noisiness of birds on Guadalcanal. He wrote that "birds, already nervous and angry about the intrusion into their peaceful jungle and plantations, also seemed to be disturbed with each and every step we took. They let us know it. I never became accustomed to their discordant cacophony."133 Chillemi continued by illustrating that "tropical birds of all colors and sizes.. .put on a symphony of earsplitting sound at the least disturbance."134 The loudness of a bird of paradise's squawk, in relation to intruders, increases because they are attempting to be more threatening by creating an illusion of proximity.135 For example, an invading bird judges the defending bird's location by loudness in the call. If the song is loud, the defender must be close by. If quiet, the proximity is greater and the threat less immediate. The defender thus tries to be as loud as possible to dissuade invaders. George McMillan, in one of his few instances of directly including his own observations of Guadalcanal, detailed the sounds of birds and the implications these had. "I wish I could remember more about the birds. They were related to cockatoos. The noisiest sounded like someone clapping two boards together. Others chirped and whistled, and of course gave rise to rumors that these were all noises of Japs signalling [sic] to each other."136 Robert Leckie noted that the birds' silence was as much a give away as their squawking. Some species did not use loudness in response to the Marines' presence, instead preferring patient observance. Leckie wrote that "birds and all the moving things were silent, and we were uneasy. Their quiet either was heralding our own approach, or it gave sign of an enemy. A rain was falling."137 Bruce Watkins agreed. "In the jungle [of New Britain] there was a constant chatter of bird calls, if it mBeletsky, 211. 132 Primack and Corlett, 150. 133 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 17. 134 Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 21. 135 Stutchbury and Morton, 81. 136 George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II (Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]), 88. 137 Leckie, 233. 248 1 ^R became quiet, we were alert for trouble." Both noisiness and silence were indicators of the birds' awareness of their territories. Henry Paustian, as a scout on New Britain, recalled how birds' squawking affected the conduct of the patrol. He recalled that birds "bothered us, especially on patrol, because they gave away our position, scolding us harshly as we sought to locate the Japanese positions."139 Stealthy patrolling included being attuned to the behavior of birds. Paustian provided an example of how birds influenced a particular patrol. It was late in the afternoon and the jungle was dark with heavy cover. A narrow, winding path led through the vines and shrubs. The birds were raising a lot of noise as we moved along. I couldn't tell whether it was only our group they were scolding or if we were closing with the Japanese. The path showed a lot of Japanese boot prints.... We proceeded cautiously to avoid walking into an ambush. After about twenty minutes, we came upon the Japanese sitting beside the trail. We had the advantage.140 Melvin Cruthers also remembered the effect of birds on patrols during his time on Willaumez Peninsula. "During the day cockatoos would take off in front of you when you were on patrol making loud calls which would signal the enemy. I still don't like the rascals."141 Birds also supplemented monotonous diets. On New Britain, Bruce Watkins hunted fowl to supplement his diet and to alleviate boredom when not patrolling. One of our favorite things was pigeon hunting. Pigeons here were larger than ones in the states. They tended to roost in the tallest tree within roughly a square mile of jungle. Their cooing could be heard at a great distance. Having located the tree, we would lie on our backs and shoot them with our carbines, the range being about 120 to 150 feet. The results went into the cooking pot 1 AD and provided us with meat much like chicken. On Guadalcanal, William Schwacha had the rare opportunity to have a parrot as a pet, if only for a short time. "I have a little red parrot I got today, shelled last night, must have stunned it, he is pretty cute."143 However, temporary novelty and affection soon 138 Watkins, 5. 139 Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 2. 140 Henry Paustian, letter to author, June 30, 2005, 4. 141 Melvin Cruthers, 149 George Peto, letter to author, September 17, 2006, 3. 150 William Kapp, Bill Kapp 's War Notes and Memories (sent to author on February 24, 2006 by W. Kapp's daughter Susan K. Anderson), 35. 151 Cooke, et al, 418. Frogs and toads (order Anura), salamanders (Caudata/Urodela), and caecilians (order Gymnophiona). 152 Cooke, et al, 420 and 427. Java, Celebes, and Mindanao also have caecilians. 153Schwacha, 111. 154 Cooke, et al, 367. 251 Marines incorporated river and stream banks, where possible, as their perimeter. Ridges, also used to delineate the perimeter, often followed the course of water. The attacking Japanese who managed to reach the perimeter were often killed, and left, in that water. These waters were also where Marines bathed, when they dared to risk it. The presence of crocodiles discouraged bathing on Guadalcanal and New Britain and aided to the overall medical problems. Yet, interaction with crocodiles was inevitable, but turned out uniquely amicable. Henry Paustian remembered peaceful relations with crocodiles; almost an understanding between two potentially hostile forces. "There were crocodiles on New Guinea, New Britain, and Pavuvu. I would guess they were also on Peleliu, but I didn't see them there. They were huge creatures, fifteen feet long in some instances."155 Paustian noted that no harm came to the Marines, as "I never heard of anyone having been attacked by one."156 Where animals produced anxiety and fear they also, on occasion, acted as comic relief. Animals sometimes found a new role as entertainment to men stripped of almost all types of traditional forms of leisure and amusement. What entertainment that was brought was small (playing cards, harmonicas), and anything paper-based (books, magazines, letters) was subject to rotting and rapid decomposition. Alternatives were often creatively found in the void. Veteran Elliot Bauss remembered an incident on Guadalcanal that, at least for some, was quite hilarious. After bathing and washing our very smelly clothes... I spotted a dead crocodile, belly up, in the tall rushes along the river. I think we both got the idea at the same time. We turned it over and pushed in into the current and watched as it floated towards all the marines bathing. When it got where we thought they could see it, we hollered, "alligator." Who can forget the scene of about fifty "bare-ass" Marines running through the woods shouting alligators, alligators\...}57 Knowing the predictable response from his fellow Marines made that crocodile's 'Viking funeral' comic relief for Bauss and his comrade, and later for everyone else. Laughter was much needed as a coping mechanism in the face of near-constant mortal Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1-2. Henry Paustian, letter to author, April 10, 2005, 1-2. Elliot Bauss in Chillemi, Guadalcanal, 2. 252 danger. Since they had to utilize what was nearby, aspects of the environment were adopted in their repertoire of practical jokes and entertainment. Bruce Watkins remembered a similar episode on New Britain. Captain Watkins and a sergeant had arrived at New Britain's northern coast for pick-up. Looking out to sea, they saw that the landing craft were still about 300 feet from shore, waiting. Apparently, lingering Japanese had fired shots at the crafts and the shore water was too shallow. So, Watkins and the sergeant decided to chance it and started to wade out to the boats. He explained: "as we neared the LCM in chest deep water a tremendous creature burst out of the water between us. The last 50 feet to the boat ramp were covered in seconds and we were pulled aboard by a laughing boat crew. It seems the creature was a porpoise and not the shark or crocodile of our imagination."158 Melvin Cruthers recalled a creative way in which the men utilized aspects of the local environment as entertainment on New Britain. "They had some insects that the guys called rhinoceros beetles [subfamily Dynastinae] that had large pincers in front and a horn sticking up. They would gather them and bump them together to aggravate them so that they would attack each other. .. .They would maneuver for some time for advantage and rush their opponent."159 Bets on the beetles heightened the competition, as money lacked value at the front. The same was often done with land crabs. Fear of certain animals was prudent and instinctive. The human imagination also contributed to anxiety and fear. Robert Leckie recalled a deep dread that once overcame him while he witnessed a feeding crocodile. He wrote that "I took the glasses from him and focused on the opposite shore, where I saw a crocodile eating the fat 'chow-hound' Japanese. I watched in debased fascination, but when the crocodile began to tug at the intestines, I recalled my own presence in that very river hardly an hour ago, and my knees went weak and I relinquished the glasses." Leckie continued, highlighting that the incident involved more than one sense, spaced out over time. "They kept us awake, crunching. The smell kept us awake. Even though we lay with our heads swathed in a blanket-which was how we kept off the mosquitoes-the smell Watkins, 7. LCM means Landing Craft Mechanized. 159 Melvin Cruthers, 1M Leckie, 89. 162 Leckie, 89. 163 Leckie, 89. 164 Cooke, et al, 394. 165 Cooke, et al, 394. 166 Cooke, et al, 394. 167 Cooke, et al, 394. In addition to ground vibrations, snakes also hunt by scent trails. 168 Leckie, 264. Genus Lachesis, or bushmasters, live in the Neotropics. The preceding two ranks, subfamily Crotalinae and family Viperidae, do not live in the South Pacific. This demonstrates that the men were apt to apply familiar names to unfamiliar species in order to conceptualize or better understand the interaction. 254 a rare case for snakes; the boom of warfare, for these ground-hugging species, was a signal to leave. If lizards survived when dinosaurs did not, they were ready for the Marines. In fact, along with land crabs and frogs and toads, lizards (order Squamata) were drawn to the men's presence and often initiated interactions. However, like frogs, they are not often recalled. Lizards were already familiar to most Americans and their camouflage tended to be quite effective. William Schwacha wrote on Guadalcanal that as "I watched little lizards scamper about the tree trunks, running across the ground, peaking from underneath huge green leaves, their beady black eyes reflecting the sunlight. I cannot describe their colors for they are of all types and descriptions."169 Yet, curiosity was mutual. Schwacha sketched an anecdote of a little lizard. Lizards of all species cover this Island. They're smart little fellows, quick as a wink. I watched one inspect my pack, it was open, inside lay letters from home, he crawled over them darted across my kit, scampered up the side and surveyed me, his beady black eyes gazed unflinchingly, his little side heaving as he breathed, a grey-white streak marked his back, otherwise he was a soft brown with little three-toed feet.170 This anecdote also reveals an aspect of the veterans' memory. When animals gave what appeared to be personalized attention to a Marine, the incident tends to stick in that individual's memory. The outcome for such seemingly personalized attention indicated just how strange the fauna of the South Pacific was. Melvin Cruthers provided another example. On New Britain, Cruthers recalled that "lizards liked to crawl inside your clothes at night for your body warmth and were scratchy and hard to dislodge."171 The fearless nature of these critters was pronounced. Lizards in say North Carolina lived in a context where human encroachment engendered fear, even limited immigration. Lizards, like other animals on Guadalcanal and New Britain, did not share this problem—their curiosity reflected animals in the primordial. Melvin Cruthers continued by noting that particular "lizards would grow to four and five feet. I saw one that was shot by an Ml that was at least four foot long and 169 Schwacha, 24. 170 Schwacha, 110-111. Probably a lined gecko that has "a distinct white dorsal stripe" (Cooke, etal, 381). 171 Melvin Cruthers, Melvin Cruthers, Chapter Nine Conclusion This project has argued that for the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and New Britain, environmental adversities were essential components of the experience of the participants and to the functionality of the Division. Environmental factors were central in defining what life and combat were like for the men at the sharp end who had to perform the daily grind of killing the Japanese while simply trying to survive exposure to the elements. This is not to argue that the surface of planet Earth is sentient, with a malicious consciousness. Instead, the act of warfare is by its nature malevolent, destructive, and adversarial. If the men had arrived at New Britain as wealthy tourists in a peacetime setting, they probably would have enjoyed the exotic biota, blue seas, and glory of primordial Nature. This was, however, not the case. Marines landed on these islands to eject the Japanese, just as the Japanese were sent far abroad to conquer. The Marines were subject to near-full exposure to the elements. They were not in the South Pacific as missionaries, builders of infrastructure, or tourists. There was infrastructure, but it was mostly military related in utility, like airstrips. As combat infantry so far from forward bases, the men lacked shelter and other base structures of what they understood to be civilization. Frontline infantry, of all the roles in the armed forces, were the most exposed to the elements. Ironically, for those who needed it the most, "creature comforts" were the least forthcoming. As Jim Johnston said, "I learned what it is like to be last in line to receive any available creature comforts and first in line to enter the maelstrom of battle."1 When young men, fresh from boot camp and infantry training, sailed out into the Pacific, they were confronted with a shift in perception about time and space. The ocean was so large as to engender feelings of insignificance and humility in the face of Nature. Once landing on Guadalcanal, their perceptions were shifted in the opposite direction, the jungle being so close, tight, and stifling. Yet, the outcome was similar, the jungle producing the same sense of smallness. Living in the jungle was always arduous. There was an abundance of rainfall, an uncomfortable level of humidity, a chill at night, 1 James W. Johnston, The Long Road of War: A Marine's Story of Pacific Combat (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2000 [1998]), 11. 257 and stifling heat in the day. Fields of fire had to be continually hacked out since flora had such impressive growth rates. Vines sliced the skin, roots snagged the feet, and river embankments were chocked with vegetation. Rivers and streams often marked the perimeter for this reason. On Guadalcanal, the men were accosted by one of humanity's oldest and most dangerous enemies, microscopic protozoan parasites carried by mosquitoes. Tackling both the disease malaria and the buzzing insect vector was a battle lost. However, the Japanese failed to take advantage of the weakened 1st Marine Division and then subsequently suffered malaria even worse. To win in the South Pacific partly entailed being able to survive the elements better than the enemy. To make this happen the definition of sick shifted and hospitalization was for the worst of cases. The contemporary understanding was that 'everyone' was sick with something, but to carry out their raison d'etre, defending the captured airstrip to protect Australia, meant the men were needed on the firing-line, and not in hospitals. Battling on the microscopic front was not just a war with malaria, but also against countless other microorganisms. Although never as commanding as malaria, environmentally-based diseases nonetheless performed a brutal battle of attrition against the ranks and ensured a steady flow of men into tented hospitals. The creation of ineffective Marines was not a turning point in the battle, but still a constant and serious concern for the functionality of the Division, hi other words, every battalion was attrited hundreds of men daily and most units were reduced to passive defense. Remaining on the defensive was grating to commanders as it was the antithesis to Marine Corps doctrine and battle ethos (the drive to meet the enemy constantly). Ultimately, not having to plow through the jungle in great numbers probably saved lives, as movement through near-impenetrable flora and rugged terrain was an ordeal for all the armies of the South Pacific (the Japanese on the Kokoda Trail being the obvious example, or the Australians at Milne Bay). After a blessed break in southern Australia, the Division returned to the war. Training in eastern New Guinea re-acclimatized the men to the rainforest, but it was accompanied by the benefits of trucks, tents, and Army PXs. When the Division invaded Cape Gloucester, on the island of New Britain, they were confronted by a 258 primordial world, a land seemingly untouched since creation. New Britain's flora had been manipulated by Melanesians but this only made things worse as secondary growth was thicker than primary growth. The rainforest was as thick as Guadalcanal's, the humidity still uncomfortable, the heat still hot, and the rainfall even worse. Landing during the monsoon season, the Marines suffered three weeks of strong Japanese resistance, battling it out in Cape Gloucester's ridges. When this invasion phase of the battle came to an end, the Marines were left on New Britain, maintaining an overall defensive posture against the once-mighty Rabaul. However, Rabaul was now timid and so the 1st Marine Division toiled for over three months in a squad war, defined by campaigning in a tropical rainforest nestled near the equator. The men's contemporary recordings and subsequent memories are unique windows into understanding their wartime experience. With a significantly lower tempo of battle after the initial invasion, the men came to remember their life on New Britain as a battle against environmental adversities. The Japanese were either retreating or hunkered down at Rabaul while the land was particularly challenging. Also, without such a brutal grind in combat, their memories remained strong when compared to the end phases of Guadalcanal, and later Peleliu and Okinawa. Rainfall dominated 'the immediate' by being constantly present. Being soaked generated misery and rotted all material possessions, and even the body. There was little about New Britain that was separable from rainfall. Bracketing all of this was the constant interaction with wildlife. Local fauna presented the men with a daily reminder of just how submerged into a foreign land they actually were. Animals were more often heard than seen and helped to engender anxiety and fear about the unknown. When animals and insects were seen, they were bizarre and even frightening, particularly creatures that humans instinctively avoid (giant spiders, for instance). Others were sources of curiosity and even the basis of entertainment like practical jokes and gambling. Money had little value and entertainment was problematic to maintain in the rainforest since everything was subject to rapid decomposition. Some animals even influenced tactical realities, like squawking birds who gave away movements and positions. 259 A giant spider, just like a rumbling volcano, served the purpose of making the men feel like they were in a bizarre world. Earthquakes on Guadalcanal, the reforming of sand spits, the changing course of a stream during heavy rains, and volcanic rumblings on New Britain added a sense of instability and further entrenched the view that these lands were utterly alien. The Japanese were often seen as a manifestation of the rainforest. In this sense, even though Japan was no more jungled than the US, the Marines felt the Japanese were inherent to the local environment, and hence the creation of 'twin enemies.' Even though environmental adversities were integral to the wartime experience on Guadalcanal and New Britain, their role in subsequent histories was grossly marginalized. Ultimately, this project challenges our conceptions of the environment's role in military history, specifically the soldier experience. Warfare is more than just two opposing human forces. Often after-action reports and official histories about Guadalcanal and New Britain were written in such a static manner that if the names where changed to French or German, one could wonder if the 1st Marine Division and the Sendai Division were slugging it out in Caen or Koln. The landscape matters, and although geological conditions (terrain) have always been present in military history, meteorological and especially ecological conditions are AWOL from the historiography. The Marines and the Japanese, and everyone else in the South Pacific, had to contend with the environment daily, just to conduct warfare. The environment, in turned, dictated the patterns of that war. Of course, German and Soviet divisions on the Eastern Front were confronted by the hostility of winter, British and Italian units suffered the desert, and everyone in Western Europe came to appreciate rain and mud. Naval and aerial combat was also subject to the weather, in every theatre. To say that environmental factors influence every soldier, every nation, at some level, does not devalue this project's thesis but instead fundamentally supports it. If Nature is that omni present and universal, why it is so neglected in military history? Perhaps, in a bit of irony, the landscape was the one thing that human enemies had in common with each other (aside from their mutual attempts to kill one another). Environmental conditions were active agents of change and, if not sentient, they were at 260 least central to the experience and conduct of modern warfare, in this case, the 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific. The proverbial stage was an actor, not the opposite, and not a secondary character at that. Alexander the Great must have realized this when his men started to die en masse in the deserts of Pakistan, just as General Alexander Vandegrift, named after that Macedonian from antiquity, watched in frustration as environmental adversities unfitted his Division. Home ~ If a Marine survived three campaigns, he was allowed to return home. This produced a small exodus from the Division after Peleliu and then again after Okinawa. When Okinawa officially came to an end in mid-June 1945, the 1st Marine Division rested where it had fought. The Division then moved to northern China for occupation duty until 1946.2 There they disarmed the now-subdued Japanese, partied with locals, and guarded rail installations against marauding communists. Returning home was predicated upon a points system that was based on various factors like duration of duty, achieved rank, medals, and so on. While resting on Okinawa and occupying the Tientsin area, environmental factors took a back seat to tedium and recovery. However, despite having left the jungle years ago, the relationship developed with the lands of Guadalcanal and New Britain did not terminate for some of the men. Lingering affects of their environmental experiences tended to be expressed either as medical disorders or in reintegrating with society. Jungle rot and malaria, for some, continued well after the end of the war. George Peto wrote of his continuing skin disorders. "I had 'jungle rot' in my ears that [was] one hell of an ordeal [for] 63 years and I still have problems with it. It keeps returning."3 Donald Fall noted that he started suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. "I had been gone one month short of three years. It was not long before PTSD manifested itself and I still put up with it."4 Veteran Leslie Harrold, corpsmen on Peleliu and Okinawa, became a medical doctor after the war. Although not cited in this project, his correspondence with the author in 2005- 2 Please see Eugene Sledge's China Marine: An Infantryman's Life After World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 3 George Peto, letter to author, May 31, 2006, 7. 4 Donald Fall, letter to author, June 9, 2005, 2. Please see Stephanie Laite Lanham's Veterans and Families' Guide to Recovering from PTSD (Husson College Graduate Nursing Students, 2003). 261 2009 had been invaluable. He spoke for all Is Marine Division veterans when he noted that "I'm not sure many of us who served in that theatre have ever been entirely free of the lingering 'jungle rot.'"5 As for himself, "to this day, I have to take measures to keep the symptoms at bay. I experience, dryness, flaking and some itching on my toes, heels and other areas of my feet."6 Jim Johnston recalled a graphic incident that illustrated just how much tenacity the jungle seemed to have. "Though I didn't know it then, I was one of New Britain's nonbattle casualties. I had begun to have chronic heartburn and indigestion. I didn't know what to do about it, so I just went on with my duties."7 What he probably assumed was food or stress related turned out to be biotic. "I was using the bathroom one morning in Nebraska when it felt like one of my intestines was coming out my rectum. Our old country doctor came to my house to check it out and found about five feet of worm hanging out my asshole."8 Johnston interpreted the general causation of his problem. "From the flies, or mosquitoes, or ticks, or leeches, or the local water, or something, I had picked up one hell of a dose of intestinal parasites. Of course I was no different from a lot of other guys who spent a long time in the filth and disease."9 Acclimatization to civilian life was not easy for men who had been away from civilization for such a long period. The Pacific War, at forty-four months, was considerably longer than the involvement of US Army units in both North Africa and western Europe. Consequently, some veterans found it difficult being away from home for so long. Warner Pyne recalled that "I headed back to the States, which to me meant Pelham Manor, New York. Then, a funny thing happened. It wasn't only that I was treated like a hero, which I figured I wasn't.. .but it was the fact that I just couldn't relate."10 At the center of his problematic acclimatization was the profound contrast between jungle warfare and civilization. "You take a seventeen-year-old kid, send him out to the Pacific War for thirty months, and then drop him off in Westchester County, 5 Leslie Harrold, letter to author, March 26, 2005, 1. 6 Leslie Harrold, letter to author, June 25, 2005, 1. 7 Johnston, 67. 8 Johnston, 67. 9 Johnston, 67. 1 Warner Pyne in Berry, 73. 262 New York, and it's bound to baffle him."11 Pyne provided an example of this. "Can you imagine describing the beach at Peleliu to your mother? ...Or taking a young beauty out that you are trying to score with and telling her about the men who had the shits in the rain on Cape Gloucester. It took me quite a while to get back into their world."12 Jim Johnston wrote of his re-acclimatization. "After you have once been in the corps through the guts of a war.. .you are never again as you were before. .. .You are, inside, much closer to the jungle than to the city street."13 If Johnston's words were not meant to be literal, they still represented that environmental adversity lay at the heart of the wartime experience. Implications ~ One important implication of this project has been its augmentation to the dominant discourse, set by John Dower's War Without Mercy (1986), positing that racial hatred between the Americans and Japanese was one of the most defining feature of the Pacific War. This project's findings could be conceived of as creating an alternative discourse positing that physical environmental adversities were the defining feature of the Pacific War. However, that argument goes too far due to the fact that for the men it was the carnality of combat that was overwhelmingly the most visceral and intense memory. A compromise could be reached by arguing that racial-driven violence and the battle with environmental adversities should share the stage, but this is too simple. The reality appears to be that the forum where a "war without mercy" could take place was generated from physical environmental conditions. It cannot be denied that the Pacific War saw a vicious conduct of war. Robert Leckie recalled witnessing the after-affects of Japanese brutality. To the north, one patrol discovered the body of an E Company scout who had been reported missing. The area bore marks of a struggle, as though he had fought hand to hand. His body bore dozens of bayonet wounds. They used him for bayonet practice. In his mouth they had stuffed flesh they had cut from his arm. His buddies said he had a tattoo there-the Marine emblem, the fouled anchor and the globe. The Japs cut it off and stuffed it in his mouth.14 11 Warner Pyne in Berry, 73. 12 Warner Pyne in Berry, 73-74. 13 Johnston, 4. 14 Robert Leckie, Helmet For My Pillow (New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]), 231. 263 That Americans and Japanese were culturally distant has been well established. However, the case has been overstated. Peter Schrijvers' chapter "Human Rage," echoing John Dower's War Without Mercy, explained American infantrymen's rage and violence in the Pacific War. Schrijvers' reasons were predictable: racism was the prime factor. "American soldiers had deep sources of racial prejudice to draw from: contempt of blacks, but also of American Indians, of Asian immigrants, and of colored peoples encountered in the course of imperialist adventures in Latin America and the Pacific Basin."15 American mutilation of the enemy in the Pacific, while not being the case in Europe, was Schrijvers' strongest evidence.16 Stephen Ambrose, a specialist in the US forces in western Europe, espoused this as well. He compared the racism of the Pacific War to the war in the West and concluded that the "difference between the war in Europe and the Pacific came about for many reasons, but chief among them was 1 7 racism." Defiling an enemy corpse can certainly be explained by cultural aspects about race in both the US and Japan, but this focus marginalizes immediate, corporeal realities derived from local conditions that would foster such actions. Mutilations were rare, environmental adversities were not. But again, these views should not necessarily be in opposition to each other, as, at the very least, it should be conceived that 1 O environmental adversities and racism were interacting "motives and means" that compliment rather than compete. As this project demonstrates, environmental factors generated misery, practically every day. US infantry in the Pacific were completely detached from civilization. There were few reminders of civility in the primordial. Where a soldier in Europe was confronted by 'civility-reminders,' like Churches and homes, this was not so in the Pacific. In the Pacific, the Marines were confronted by the extreme fortitude of the common Japanese soldier and a hostile landscape like none they had ever known. Lashing out was to be expected. However, a cultural versus 15 Peter Schrijvers, The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 216. 16 Schrijvers, 216. 17 Stephen Ambrose, To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 103. 18 Daniel Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 10. 264 environmental determinism debate is less useful than trying to understand how these factors related to and compounded each other. This project also challenges the view that Nature is simply a backdrop to human endeavors. To look at it another way, there were very few things about the wartime experience in the South Pacific that were separable from environmental adversities. There were no tank battles because of the rugged terrain.19 Even smaller mortars were problematic to operate in the rainforests of the South Pacific. On New Britain, the Marines' trusted Springfield .303 was replaced by the Ml Garand, with less accuracy but great firepower because the flora reduced vision to yards. For men trained to fire only when an enemy was in sight, shooting from the hip was the norm instead. Casualties in the Pacific were significantly fewer when compared to Europe, and an important reason for this was that the landscape negated the lethal potency of modern technology. True, the Japanese spread themselves uselessly thin across countless islands so the Allies could by-pass them, and this mostly explains why fewer Americans and Japanese died compared to Germans and the peoples in the Soviet Union (most German units had to be encountered). Perhaps this was a great irony: Nature kept combatants from unleashing more damage on each other. In fact, as subtly posited by the Army's official medical history of the Pacific War, if it was not for the suppression of malaria, there could not have been a war in the Pacific (similar to quinine's role in western imperialism).20 The men of the 1st Marine Division were confronted with the daunting task of surviving in the wild of the South Pacific. "Immediate and elemental pursuits," just to survive Nature, came to define their wartime experience. Managing to function in the alien landscape was the precursor to even being able to conduct operations against their human enemy, who was also being assaulted by the elements. Ultimately, despite that the literature has marginalized the role of environmental factors, this project has asserted that environmental adversities were integral and central to their wartime experience. The exception is the tank battle on Peleliu. 20 Please see Headrick's Tools of Empire for a similar argument applied to the colonization of Africa in the mid-1800s, coinciding with the use of quinine to "making imperialism possible where it was otherwise unlikely" (11). Bibliography Text~ Ambrose, Stephen. To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Anderson, Jr., Richard C. "US Army in World War II: Introduction and Organization." 2000. Pantheon Books, 1986. Ebeling, Walter. Urban Entomology. 2002 [1996]. Entomology UC Riverside. August 2002. Science, Physiology, and Behavior, Volume 192. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2005. Kushida, Clete A., ed. Lung Biology in Health and Diseases: Sleep Deprivation: Clinical Issues, Pharmacology, and Sleep Loss Effects, Volume 193. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2005. Leckie, Robert. Helmet For My Pillow. New York: ibooks, inc., 2001 [1957]. Light, Leah L. and Deborah M. Burke, eds. Language, Memory, and Aging. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Longman, Kenneth A. and Jan Jenik. Tropical Ecology Series: Tropical Forest and its Environment. London: Longman Group Limited, 1974. Lundstrom, John B. The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941-June 1942. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976. McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific. New York: The Penguin Group, 1998. McMillan, George. The Old Breed: A History of The First Marine Division In World War II. Washington: Zenger Publishing Co. Inc., 1979 [1949]. Merillat, Herbert C. Guadalcanal Remembered. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1982. Miller, John, Jr. United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The First Offensive. Washington: Historical Division, GPO, 1949. Miller, John, Jr. United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: Cartwheel: The Reduction ofRabaul. Washington: Historical Division, GPO, 1959. Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942-February 1943. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955. Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume VI: Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 22 July 1942-1 May 1944. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975. Morton, Louis. United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: Strategy and Command: The First Two Years. Washington: Historical Division, GPO, 1962. Mueller-Dombois, Dieter and F. Raymond Fosberg. Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands. New York, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 1998. Muirhead-Thomson, R. C. Mosquito Behaviour in Relation to Malaria Transmission and Control in the Tropics. London: Edward Arnold & Co, 1951. Nalty, Bernard C. Marines In World War II Commemorative Series; Cape Gloucester: The Green Inferno. Washington: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1994. O'Donnell, Patrick K. Into the Rising Sun: In Their Words, World War IPs Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat. New York: The Free Press, 2003 [2002]. Paijmans, K., ed. New Guinea Vegetation. Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1976 (co-published with the Australian National University Press, Canberra). Peto, George. "Heroes." The Old Breed News, July-August 2005, Vol. LV, No. 4, 33. Primack, Richard and Richard Corlett. Tropical Rain Forests: An Ecological and 268 Biogeographical Comparison. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Company, 2005. Risch, Erna. United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services: The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume I. Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1953. Rottman, Gordon L. World War II Pacific Island Guide: A Geo-Military Study. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Salfelder, K. with T. R. de Liscano and E. Sauerteig. Atlas of Parasitic Pathology, Volume Twenty. Accord Station, Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992. Schrijvers, Peter. The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Shaw, Henry I., Jr., and Douglas T. Kane. History of the U.S. Marine Corps Operations in War II, Volume II: Isolation ofRabaul. FMFRP 12-34, Doctrine Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, VA: 2000 [1963]. Shaw, Henry I., Jr. Marines In World War II Commemorative Series: First Offensive: The Marine Campaign For Guadalcanal. Washington: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1992. Sherman, Edmund. Reminiscence and the Self in Old Age. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1991. Sledge, Eugene B. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 [1981]. Spear, Norman E. and David C. Riccio. Memory: Phenomena and Principles. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1994. Stauffer, Alvin P. United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services: The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan. Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1956. Stutchbury, Bridget J. M. and Eugene S. Morton. Behavioral Ecology of Tropical Birds. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2001. Zierer, Clifford M., "The Geographic Background," The Southwest and the War Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1974 [1944]. Tucker, Richard P. and Edmund Russell, eds. Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of Warfare. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2004. Turner, I. M. The Ecology of Trees in the Tropical Rain Forest. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Watkins, Richard Bruce. Brothers in Battle: One Marine's Account of War in the Pacific. Independently produced, 2000. Warrell, David A. and Herbert M. Giles, eds. Essential Malariology, Fourth Edition. London: Arnold, 2002. Williams, Mary H. United States Army in World War II: Special Studies: Chronology: 1941-1945. Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, GPO, 1956. Winters, Harold A. with Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., William J. Reynolds, and David W. Rhyne. Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Womersley, John S., ed. Handbooks of the Flora of Papua New Guinea, Volume I. 269 Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1978. Young, James R. Malaria in the South, 1900-1930. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1972. No Author ~ "Aussies ready to evacuate as volcano blows." ABC News Online. 8 October 2006. Climate. 2008. "Ingrown Toenail - topic Overview." Health A-Z. WebMD. January 2007. "What's the rainiest place on Earth." EarthSky. 2008. Personal Correspondence ~ Berline, Bob. Letter to author. October 13, 2005. Cannal, Jack. Interviewed by the Oral History Section from the USMC Historical Center. August 4, 2005. 1st Marine Division Association 58th Annual Reunion. Kansas City, MO. Chillemi, Anthony. Unpublished Memoirs ~ Chillemi, Anthony C. "Guadalcanal_August 7,1942 to December 9, 1942." Navy Blue & Marine Green. Compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005. Chillemi, Anthony C. "Cape Gloucester, New Britain_December 26, 1943 to Late- 273 February 1944." Navy Blue & Marine Green. Compact disc sent to author, September 16, 2005. Cox, Herschel A., Jr., et al. Marines Remember Cape Gloucester World War IIBattle. 1996. Manuscript sent to author on February 26, 2006. Also available with the Personal Papers Collection, History and Museums Division, Marine Corps Historical Center. Kapp, William. Bill Kapp 's War Notes and Memories. Sent to author on February 24, 2006 by W. Kapp's daughter Susan K. Anderson. Schwacha, William. Untitled diary. Copy sent to author by Robert Shedd, March 6, 2006. Pagination by Robert Shedd, founder of the A-l-5 veterans group. Also available at the National Guadalcanal Memorial Museum in Kalamazoo, ML Slater, David. "Jungle Vignettes," A Taste of War: A sort of memoir of experiences in my service with the USMC 9' Defense Battalion, Fleet Marine Force, May 1942 to November 1944. Sent to author October 2006. Marine Corps Audiovisual Research Archives, Quantico, VA ~ Davis, Raymond G. USMC. Oral History Transcript. 1977. Box 42. Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Donoghue, Jim. USMC. Oral History Transcript. 1980. Box 47. Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Leonard, Jr., John P. USMC. Oral History Transcript. 1980. Box 92. Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Masters, Sr., James M. Marine Corps Oral History Program. 1981. Box 97. Oral History Section, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Taxis, Samuel, USMC. Oral History Transcript. 1981. Box 144. Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Vandegrift, Alexander A., USMC. Oral History Transcript. 1962. Box 153. Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Wismer, Ralph M., UMSC. Oral History Transcript. 1977. Box 161. Oral History Collection, Marine Corps History and Museum Division. Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, VA ~ "Division Bulletin, Enemy Information." July 21, 1942. File 7, Box 73. "Division Bulletin, Enemy Information." August 5, 1942. File 7, Box 73. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V. "Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation." July 1, 1943. Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V. "Phase V." July 1, 1943. Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V. "Annex T: Medical." July 1, 1943. Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V. "Annex X: Numerical Summary of Casualties in Units of First Marine Division (reinforced)." July 1, 1943. Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V. "Annex X: Summary: Killed in Action or Died as a Result of Wounds, First Marine Division (Reinforced) 7 August to 10 December, 1942." July 1, 1943. Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. II, Phase V. "Annex X: August 7 to December 10, 1942." July 1, 1943. Folder 2 (parts 1 and 2), Box 11. Ellis, J. W. "Comment VIII: Medical." May 7, 1943. Folder 14, Box 4. "Guadalcanal: General Information." No date. Folder 9, Box 3. First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation: "Annex G — 1st Mar Div Operation Order #2-43: Annex C: Medical." November 14, 1943. Folder 2, Box 3. First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation: "Annex A: Intelligence." November 14, 1943. Folder 2, Box 3. First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation: "Annex D: Alamo Force, G-3 Plan." November 14, 1943. Folder 2, Box 3. First Marine Division, Special Action Report, Cape Gloucester Operation: "Annex H: First Marine Division Station List, January 1, 1944." Folder 2, Box 3. Medical Experience and Problems in the Guadalcanal Operation, Phase I, June 26 to August 7, 1942. No date. Folder 33, Box 7. Medical Experience and Problems in the Guadalcanal Operation, Phase III, August 10 to August 20, 1942. No date. Folder 33, Box 7. Medical Experience and Problems in the Guadalcanal Operation, Phase IV, August 21 to September 18, 1942. No date. Folder 33, Box 7. Roddis, Louis H. Naval Medical Experience and Lessons in the Conquest of Guadalcanal. No date. Folder 8, Box 3. "Study of Guadalcanal." July 11, 1942. File 5, Box 7. National Archives and Records Administration, "Archive II, " College Park, MD ~ Phase II: Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, file #12-1.0312/43 (7313- b). Entry 427, box 24626, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File. Phase II: Landing and Seizure of Cape Gloucester Airfield, file #12-1.0312/43 (7313- b), "Annex A: Intelligence," December 21, 1943, "Operation Order #1-43: Annex B: Phase II: Annexes." Entry 427, box 24626, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File. Phase IV: Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain - Borgen Bay - Itni River Area and Occupation ofRooke Island, file #12-1.0001/44 (7813-d). Entry 427, box 24624, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File. Phase IV: Extensive Patrolling of Western New Britain - Borgen Bay - Itni River Area and Occupation ofRooke Island, file #12-1.0001/44 (7813-d), "Annex H," February 20, 1944. Entry 427, box 24624, RG 407: WWII Operations Reports, 1940-48, Special File. "Is Marine Division, Intelligence Annex to Special Action Report (Cape Gloucester)." No date. Box 7, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase I. "Annex M: Medical." June 25, 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase I. "Copy of Subject Report." May 24, 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase II. "Annex H: Medical." June 25, 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase II. "Phase II (from H hour to Evening 9 August)." June 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase III. "Annex H: Medical." June 25, 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase IV. "Annex B: Medical." June 25, 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Vol. I, Phase IV. "Phase IV (20 August - 18 September)." June 25, 1943. Box 39, RG 127: Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Department of the Navy, Washington, DC ~ "Chapter 15: Diagnostic Nomenclature," Manual of the Medical Department of the United States Navy. Washington: GPO, 1939. "Chapter III: The Solomons: Section 1, Guadalcanal," The History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II, Volume 1, [unpublished and unabridged]. Washington: 1946. Herman, Jan Kenneth and Andre Baden Sobocinski, A Short History of Navy Medicine, Summary of "Alphabetical List of Diagnosis with Total Number of Admissions and Readmissions for Each 1st Marine Division Only—Guadalcanal" from "Annex X: Numerical Summary of Casualties in unit of First Marine Division (reinforced)." Diseases: 8424 cases. Abscess, Peritonsillar (#500): 13 cases. Abscess, Unclassified (#1300): 36 cases. Appendicitis, Acute (#304): 17 cases. Appendicitis, Chronic (#378): 16 cases. Bronchitis, Acute (#817): 12 cases. Bursitis, Acute (#1604): 13 cases. Calculus, (Urinary System) (#749): 12 cases. Catarrhal Fever, Acute (#801): 371 cases. Cellulitis (#1305): 273 cases. Cyst, Teratoma, Inflamed (#2334): 21 cases. Dengue (#1001): 10 cases. Dermatitis Venenata (#1916): 55 cases. Dermatitis (#1917): 17 cases. Diagnosis Undetermined (#2122): 81 cases. Dysentery, Bacillary (#902): 11 cases. Enterocolitis, Acute (#323): 14 cases. Enteritis, Acute (#322): 17 cases. Epididymitis, Acute, Non-venereal (#712): 10 cases. Flat Foot (#1614): 12 cases. Fungus Infection Skin (#2212): 46 cases. Gastro-Enteritis (#332): 676 cases. Gonococcus Infection, Urethra (#1205): 13 cases. Hemorrhoids (#336): 20 cases. Hernia, Inguinal, Indirect (#2004): 34 cases. Impetigo Contagiosa (#1934): 33 cases. Ingrowing Nail (#1937): 14 cases. Lymphadenitis (#1403): 22 cases. Lymphangitis (#1405): 19 cases. Malaria (#1004): 5749 cases. Mumps (#810): 17 cases. Otitis, Media, Acute (#520): 30 cases. No Disease (Mental Observation) (#2143): 10 cases. Pharyngitis, Acute (#822): 12 cases. Psychoneurosis, Hysteria (#1534): 58 cases. Psychoneurosis, Situational (#1521): 17 cases. Psychoneurosis, War Neurosis (#1537): 131 cases. Shock (#2153): 11 cases. Syphilis (#1207): 10 cases. Tonsillitis, Acute (#818): 177 cases. All Other Causes (less than 10 admissions): 314 cases. Injuries: 2199 individuals. Burn (#2508): 33 individuals. Compression, (Chest) (#2511): 92 individuals. Contusion (#2512): 30 individuals. Diagnosis Undetermined (Injuries) (#2518): 15 individuals. Exhaustion from overexertion (#2526): 16 individuals. Fracture, simple (#2531): 36 individuals. Heat Exhaustion (#2535): 46 individuals. Intracranial Injury (#2543): 23 individuals. Killed in action, Details Not Known (#2545): 241 individuals. Sprain Joint (#2550): 46 individuals. Strain, Muscular (#2552): 14 individuals. Wound, Gunshot (#2576): 1472 individuals. Wound, Incised (#2562): 10 individuals. Wound, Infected (#2577): 10 individuals. Wound, Lacerated (#2563): 51 individuals. Wound, Punctured (#2565): 18 individuals. All Other Causes (Injuries): 46 individuals. Poisonings: 12 individuals. Poisoning Venom (Insect) (#2506): 12 individuals. Grand Total =10,635. 278 Appendix B Environmental Agency versus Non-Environmental Agency Modified Figures from "Alphabetical List of Diagnosis with Total Number of Admissions and Readmissions for Each, 1st Marine Division Only—Guadalcanal" Environmental Agency: Total 7574 cases, or 71.21% of overall casualties. o Malaria (#1004): 5749 cases, o Gastro-Enteritis (#332): 676 cases, o Catarrhal Fever, Acute (#801): 371 cases, o Cellulitis (#1305): 273 cases, o Tonsillitis, Acute (#818): 177 cases, o Dermatitis Venenata (#1916): 55 cases. N o Fungus Infection Skin (#2212): 46 cases, o Impetigo Contagiosa (#1934): 33 cases, o Otitis, Media, Acute (#520): 30 cases, o Lymphangitis (#1405): 19 cases, o Dermatitis (#1917): 17 cases, o Enteritis, Acute (#322): 17 cases, o Mumps (#810): 17 cases, o Enterocolitis, Acute (#323): 14 cases, o Abscess, Peritonsillar (#500): 13 cases, o Bronchitis, Acute (#817): 12 cases, o Pharyngitis, Acute (#822): 12 cases, o Dysentery, Bacillary (#902): 11 cases, o Dengue (#1001): 10 cases, o Epididymitis, Acute, Non-venereal (#712): 10 cases. o Poisoning Venom (Insect) (#2506): 12 individuals. Non-Environmental Agency: Total 2395 individuals, or 22.51% of overall casualties. Exogenous: o Wound, Gunshot (#2576): 1472 individuals. o Killed in action, Details Not Known (#2545): 241 individuals. o Compression, (Chest) (#2511): 92 individuals. o Wound, Lacerated (#2563): 51 individuals. o Burn (#2508): 33 individuals. o Contusion (#2512): 30 individuals. o Intracranial Injury (#2543): 23 individuals. o Wound, Punctured (#2565): 18 individuals. o Lymphadenitis (#1403): 22 cases. o Gonococcus Infection, Urethra (#1205): 13 cases. o Syphilis (#1207): 10 cases. 279 Endogenous: o Psychoneurosis, War Neurosis [disease] (#1537): 131 cases. o Psychoneurosis, Hysteria [disease] (#1534): 58 cases. o Psychoneurosis, Situational [disease] (#1521): 17 cases. o Flat Foot (#1614): 12 cases. o Shock [disease] (#2153): 11 cases. o Hernia, Inguinal, Indirect (#2004): 34 cases. o Cyst, Teratoma, Inflamed (#2334): 21 cases. o Hemorrhoids (#336): 20 cases. o Ingrowing Nail (#1937): 14 cases. o Calculus, (Urinary System) (#749): 12 cases. o Fracture, simple [injury] (#2531): 36 individuals, o Strain, Muscular [injury] (#2552): 14 individuals. o Wound, Incised [injury] (#2562): 10 individuals. Undetermined Agency: Total 666 cases and individuals, or 6.26% of overall casualties, o Diagnosis Undetermined [disease] (#2122): 81 cases, o Abscess, Unclassified (#1300): 36 cases, o Appendicitis, Acute (#304): 17 cases, o Appendicitis, Chronic (#378): 16 cases, o Bursitis, Acute (#1604): 13 cases. o No Disease (Mental Observation) [disease] (#2143): 10 cases, o All Other Causes [disease] (less than 10 admissions): 314 cases. o Heat Exhaustion (#2535): 46 individuals. o Sprain Joint (#2550): 46 individuals. o All Other Causes [injuries]: 46 individuals. o Exhaustion from overexertion (#2526): 16 individuals. o Diagnosis Undetermined [injuries] (#2518): 15 individuals. o Wound, Infected [injury] (#2577): 10 individuals. Grand Total =10,635. Incapcitators resultant in over 100 cases/individuals: 1. Malaria: 5749 cases. 2. Wound, Gunshot: 1472 individuals. 3. Gastroenteritis: 676 cases. 4. Catarrhal Fever, Acute: 371 cases. 5. All Other Causes [disease] (less than 10 admissions): 314 cases. 6. Killed in action, Details Not Known: 241 individuals. 7. Tonsillitis, Acute: 177 cases. 8. Psychoneurosis, War Neurosis: 131 cases. Vita Name: Dylan A. Cyr Post-secondary Education and Degrees: The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, 2003-2009, Ph.D. in History. The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2002-2003, M.A. in History. The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 1998-2002, Honours B.A. in History with Classical Studies Minor. Honours and Awards: Research Grant, US Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, Quantico, 2007. Graduate Thesis Research Award, The University of Western Ontario, 2007. The Beeler-Raider Fellowship, US Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, Quantico, 2006. Bursary, The Ley and Lois Smith Fund, Department of History, The University of Western Ontario, 2005. Graduate Student Teaching Award, the Society of Graduate Students, The University of Western Ontario, 2005. Related Work Experience: Instructor, History 2179E: The Two World Wars, intersession, Huron University College, May-June 2009. Teaching Assistant, Huron University College, 2007-2008. Teaching Assistant, The University of Western Ontario, 2003-2007. Teaching Assistant, The University of Waterloo, 2002-2003. Publications: Cyr, Dylan A. (2009). Nine entries for The United States at War, V. 11: Middle East Wars, Military History Series, ABC-Clio. Cyr, Dylan A. (2008). Veteran Recollections as Impetus for Eco-Military History. Conference Proceedings Between Memory and History, UVic.