One Marine, One Ship

by Vin Suprynowicz


Oct. 26 falls on a Monday this year.


Ask the significance of the date, and you're

likely to draw some puzzled looks - five more days

to stock up for Halloween?


It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige and

Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee that

they wouldn't have had it any other way. What they

did 67 years ago, they did precisely so their

grandchildren could live in a land of peace and

plenty.


Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms

they fought to leave us, may be a discussion best

left for another day. Today we struggle to

envision - or, for a few of us, to remember - how

the world must have looked on Oct. 26, 1942. A few

thousand lonely American Marines had been put

ashore on Guadalcanal, a god-forsaken malarial

jungle island which just happened to lie 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 built an air field. And

Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto immediately

grasped what that meant. No effort would be spared

to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position

that could endanger his ships during any future

operations to the south. Before long, relentless

Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S.

Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on

their own.


World War Two is generally calculated from

Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. But that's a

eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering

up their muscles in Korea and Manchuria as early

as 1931, and in China by 1934. By 1942 they'd

devastated every major Pacific military force or

stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain,

Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk

of America's proud Pacific fleet lay beached or

rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor. A few

aircraft carriers and submarines remained, though

as Mitchell Paige and his 30-odd men were sent out

to establish their last, thin defensive line on

that ridge southwest of the tiny American

bridgehead on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, he would not

have been much encouraged to know how those

remaining American aircraft carriers were faring

offshore.

(The next day, their Mark XV torpedoes - carrying

faulty magnetic detonators reverse-engineered from

a First World War German design - proved so

ineffective that the United States Navy couldn't

even scuttle the doomed and listing carrier Hornet

with eight carefully aimed torpedoes. Instead, our

forces suffered the ignominy of leaving the

abandoned ship to be polished off by the enemy ...

only after Japanese commanders determined she was

damaged too badly to be successfully towed back to

Tokyo as a trophy.)


As Paige - then a platoon sergeant - and his

riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four

water-cooled Brownings, 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?


The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to

seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese

War of 1905. Their commanders certainly did not

expect the war to be lost on some God-forsaken

jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in

khaki in October of 1942.


But in preceding days, Marine commander Vandegrift

had defied War College doctrine, "dangling" his

men in exposed positions to draw Japanese attacks,

then springing his traps "with the steel vise of

firepower and artillery," in the words of Naval

historian David Lippman.


The Japanese regiments had been chewed up, good.

Still, the American forces had so little to work

with that Paige's men would have only the four

30-caliber Brownings to defend the one ridge

through which the Japanese opted to launch their

final assault against Henderson Field, that

fateful night of Oct. 25.


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 men,"

historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese)

Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's

burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The

American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is

probably too low."


Among the 90 American dead and wounded that night

were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon.

Every one. As the night 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 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 gun cradled

under his arm, firing as he went.


The weapon did not fail.


Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer

Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered 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 that was the second problem. Part of the

American line had fallen to the last Japanese

attack. "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." In the end, "The element of surprise

permitted the small force to clear the crest."


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. Because of a handful of U.S.

Marines, one of whom, now 82, lives out a quiet

retirement with his wife Marilyn in La Quinta,

Calif.


But while the Marines had won their battle on

land, it would be meaningless unless the U.S. Navy

could figure out a way to stop losing night

battles in "The Slot" to the northwest of the

island, through which the Japanese kept sending in

barges filled with supplies and reinforcements for

their own desperate forces on Guadalcanal.


The U.S. Navy had lost so many ships in those

dreaded night actions that the waters off Savo

were given the grisly sailor's nickname by which

they're still known today: Ironbottom Sound.


So desperate did things become that finally, 18

days after Mitchell Paige won his Congressional

Medal of Honor on that ridge above Henderson

Field, Admiral Bull Halsey himself broke a stern

War College edict - the one against committing

capital ships in restricted waters. Gambling the

future of the cut-off troops on Guadalcanal on one

final roll of the dice, Halsey dispatched into the

Slot his two remaining fast battleships, the USS

South Dakota and the USS Washington, escorted by

the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their

bunkers to get them there and back.


In command of the 28-knot battlewagons was the

right man at the right place, gunnery expert Rear

Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee. Lee's flag

flew aboard the Washington, in turn commanded by

Captain Glenn Davis.

Lee was a nut for gunnery drills. "He tested every

gunnery-book rule with exercises," Lippman writes,

"and ordered gunnery drills under odd conditions -

turret firing with relief crews, anything that

might simulate the freakishness of battle."


As it turned out, the American destroyers need not

have worried about carrying enough fuel to get

home. By 11 p.m. on Nov. 13, outnumbered better

than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force

driving down from the northwest, every one of the

four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk,

or set aflame, while the South Dakota - known

throughout the fleet as a jinx ship - managed to

damage some lesser Japanese vessels but continued

to be plagued with electrical and fire control

problems.

"Washington was now the only intact ship left in

the force," Lippman writes. "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

still had the conn. He had just heard that South

Dakota had gone off the air and had seen

(destroyers) Walke and Preston "blow sky high."

Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage, while

hundreds of men were swimming in the water and

Japanese ships were racing in.


"Hunter had to do something. The course he took

now could decide the war. 'Come left,' he said,

and Washington straightened out on a course

parallel to the one on which she (had been)

steaming. 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. ...

"Meanwhile, Washington raced through burning seas.

Everyone could see dozens of men in the water

clinging to floating wreckage. Flag Lieutenant

Raymond Thompson said, "Seeing that burning,

sinking ship as it passed so close aboard, and

realizing that there was nothing I, or anyone,

could do about it, was a devastating experience.'


"Commander Ayrault, Washington's executive

officer, clambered down ladders, ran to Bart

Stoodley's damage-control post, and ordered

Stoodley to cut loose life rafts. That saved a lot

of lives. But the men in the water had some fight

left in them. One was heard to scream, 'Get after

them, Washington!' "

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. The Washington was

fast, undamaged, and bristling with 16-inch guns.

And, thanks to Lt. Hunter's course change, she was

also now invisible to the enemy.


Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese

battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights,

illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened

fire. Finally, standing out in the darkness, Lee

and Davis could positively identify an enemy

target.


The Washington's main batteries opened fire at 12

midnight precisely. Her new SG radar fire control

system worked perfectly. Between midnight and

12:07 a.m., Nov. 14, the "last ship in the U.S.

Pacific Fleet" stunned the battleship Kirishima

with 75, 16-inch shells. For those aboard the

Kirishima, it rained steel.


In seven minutes, the Japanese battleship was

reduced to a funeral pyre. She went down at 3:25

a.m., the first enemy sunk by an American

battleship since the Spanish-American War.

Stunned, the remaining Japanese ships withdrew.

Within days, Yamamoto and his staff reviewed their

mounting losses and recommended the unthinkable to

the emperor - withdrawal from Guadalcanal.


But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it

was - the ridge held by a single Marine, the

battle won by the last American ship?

In the autumn of 1942.


When the Hasbro Toy Co. called up 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 "GI Joe."

And now you know.

thanks for the reminder

The part about P/Sgt. Paige walking down the hill with the machinegun spitting out Justice to the Japs gave me goosebumps. The very end did so again. A fantastic retelling of history. Thank you for posting...