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Master Sergeant
Posts: 1,789
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Marietta, GA
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How many Marines does it take to hold a hill? -
12-16-2005, 02:00 PM
One of our guys posted this in the DIRT forums. I thouhgt a few of y'all might enjoy reading it ... and for you older guys, you'll find an interesting flashback to your youth at the end.
October 26, 2005
IT CAME DOWN TO ONE MARINE
On Nov. 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of
congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, Calif., southeast of
Palm Springs.
He was a combat veteran of World War II. Reason enough to honor him. But
this Marine was a little different. This Marine was Mitchell Paige.
It's hard today to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember --
what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942.
The U. S. Navy was not the most powerful fighting force in the Pacific.
Not by a long shot. So the Navy basically dumped a few thousand lonely
American Marines on the beach on Guadalcanal and high-tailed it out of
there.
You Navy guys can hold those letters. Of course Nimitz, Fletcher and
Halsey had to ration what few ships they had. I've written separately
about the way Bull Halsey rolled the dice on the night of Nov. 13, 1942,
violating the stern War College edict against committing capital ships in
restricted waters and instead dispatching into the Slot his last two
remaining fast battleships, the South Dakota and the Washington, escorted
by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them
there and back.
Those American destroyer captains need not have worried about carrying
enough fuel to get home. By 11 p. m., outnumbered better than three-
to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest,
every one of those four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or
set aflame. And while the South Dakota -- known throughout the fleet as a
jinx ship -- had damaged some lesser Japanese vessels, she continued to
be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.
"Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force," writes naval
historian David Lippman. "In fact, at that moment Washington was the
entire U. S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral)
Kondo's ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese
ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ..."
On Washington's bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter had the conn. He had just
seen the destroyers Walke and Preston "blown sky high." Dead ahead lay
their burning wreckage. Hundreds of men were swimming in the water and
the Japanese ships racing in.
"Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the
war," Lippman writes. "'Come left,' he said. ... Washington's rudder
change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing
her from being silhouetted by their fires.
"The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they
could not spot Washington behind the fires. ..." Washington raced through
burning seas. Dozens of destroyer men were in the water clinging to
floating wreckage. "Get after them, Washington!" one shouted.
Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes
intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had
given China Lee one final chance.
Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned
on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened
fire. Finally, as her own muzzle blasts illuminated her in the darkness,
Admiral Lee and Captain Glenn Davis could positively identify an enemy
target.
The Washington's main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her
radar fire control system functioned perfectly. During the first seven
minutes of Nov. 14, 1942, the "last ship in the U. S. Pacific Fleet" fired
75 of her 16-inch shells at the battleship Kirishima. Aboard Kirishima,
it rained steel. At 3:25 a. m., her burning hulk officially became the
first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American
War. Stunned, the Japanese withdrew. Within days, Japanese commander
Isoroku Yamamoto recommended the unthinkable to the emperor -- withdrawal
from Guadalcanal.
But that was still weeks in the future. We were still with Mitchell Paige
back on the god-forsaken malarial jungle island of Guadalcanal, placed
like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New
Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago ... the very route the Japanese Navy
would have to take to reach Australia.
On Guadalcanal the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Yamamoto
knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart
Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships. Before long,
relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U. S. Navy from
inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.
As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully
emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings, manning their
section of the thin khaki line which was expected to defend Henderson
Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942, it's unlikely
anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that
most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U. S. Marines does it
take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?
Nor did the commanders of the mighty Japanese Army, who had swept all
before them for decades, expect their advance to be halted on some God-
forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in
October of 1942.
But by the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry
Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554"The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses
are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handled 975 Japanese
bodies. ...
men," historian Lippman reports. The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too
low."
You've already figured out where the Japanese focused their attack,
haven't you? Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night
were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night of
endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his
dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few
bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese
forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.
The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale:
"When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position,
P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless
determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his
men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of
Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took
over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."
In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed
Brownings -- the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for
a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition, glowing cherry
red, at its first U. S. Army trial -- and did something for which the
weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the
place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move
around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he
went.
And the weapon did not fail.
Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was
first to discover the answer to our question: How many able-bodied
Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated,
combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?
On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone
sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn
would bring.
One hill: one Marine.
But "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off,
and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible,"
reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."
For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted
communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were
at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food
to the position the evening before."
Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40
a. m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use
of grenades." They cleared the ridge.
And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally
crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an
insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal.
But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was -- the ridge held
by a single Marine, in the autumn of 1942?
When the Hasbro Toy Co. called some years back, asking permission to put
the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought
they must be joking.
But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "G. I.
Joe."
And now you know.
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How many Marines does it take to hold a hill?
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