June 30, 2022
Volume 52 - No. 25
by Dan A. D’Amelio
Lying prone behind the sand bags, the Marines peered into the night. The Japanese attack was about to begin. Only moments before, the Japanese had been spotted by a sergeant in charge of a Marine outpost. Now the jungle was quiet, except for the rain that had turned the ground into mud.
It would be a crucial battle this night of October 23, 1942 on Guadacanal. The Japanese had decided to build an airfield on the island. As it was being constructed, the Marines of the 1st Division on August 7 had hit the beaches, but when they reached the airfield, they met no resistance. To avoid the naval shelling, the two thousand airfield workers had run far into the jungle. The Marines were now in control of the airfield, which they called Henderson Field, but the Japanese were determined to take it back. If they succeeded they would accomplish the purpose for building the airfield: to continue their conquest of the Pacific, then invade Australia and New Zealand.
To defend the airfield there were some nine hundred Marines of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Regiment, the battalion headed by Lieutenant Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller. Protecting their left flank was the 164th Army Infantry Regiment, most of them National Reservists from North Dakota.
They would be fighting some 3,000 Japanese infantry of a crack unit: the Sendai Division. From his command headquarters, the man heading the division, General Masao Maruyana, had boasted, “I intend to exterminate the enemy around the airfield in one blow.” His confidence was based on the superb physical condition of his troops. While training in Japan and carrying full combat gear, the division had marched 122 miles in three days, and the last few miles had been done at double-time.
But, in addition to having what one Marine officer later stated was a “picture-perfect” example of a fixed military position, the Marines had the strategic advantage of having a defense line along a ridge which declined gradually for about The Paper - 760.747.7119
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a hundred feet to a broad expanse of grassland that was ringed by the jungle.
Under the direction and supervision of Colonel Puller, the Marines had cut down large swathes of the grassland with their machetes to
give them a clear firing view, and had strung up double rows of barbed wire; in the rear, they had set up rows of mortars, all sighted on the expected points of attack; and along the whole defense line, which extended for about a mile, water-cooled, Browning .30-caliber
Basilone Continued on Page 2
machine guns were mounted every 150 yards.
Manning one of the machine guns was Sgt. John Basilone. He commanded a squad of twelve men and two gun emplacements, each emplacement with two machine
