No Bended Knee

by Merrill B. Twining

  We were the “let George do it” division of the Marine Corps. The 2d Division, already partially committed in Iceland, was necessarily exempted from transferring any of their seasoned noncommissioned officers. Lt. Col. Gerald C. “Jerry” Thomas, then our assistant division operations officer, soon shortened the nickname to “Old George.” That name has stuck to the 1st Marine Division, an organization that has probably done more fighting in this century than any similar unit in any of the world’s armed forces. World War II, China, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait City, and Mogadishu—“Old George” was always there and always rose to the occasion.

  During this prewar period the division was living under canvas at Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina. This was a fine training area, and we made the most of it. Amphibious training was conducted simultaneously on a battalion basis by sending one unit at a time to the lower Chesapeake Bay, where transports could operate in protected waters near Solomon’s Island—a portentous name, although we were not aware of it at the time. Brig. Gen. Alexander Archer Vandegrift, the assistant division commander, was in charge of all training and I was his operations officer and assistant. It was a rewarding assignment.

  One Sunday in December, I had planned to go squirrel hunting with Maj. Lewis “Chesty” Puller, an old friend. Instead I got shafted out of turn with the weekend staff duty. Puller went home to Saluda, Virginia, to be with his family. That afternoon I was doing paperwork in my office when an orderly from communications dropped an ALNAV on my desk. The dispatch read, “Execute WPL 46 against Japan.”

  That brief message changed a lot of things in the 1st Marine Division. We could abandon the onerous peacetime safety regulations and conduct realistic combat training using ball ammunition for field problems and overhead fire by artillery and machine guns. The men responded with patriotic enthusiasm and intense interest. Progress toward a state of combat readiness was quickly apparent. Despite cold, snowy weather, morale in the tent camps reached a high state. The only exception was one dour old colonel who failed to comply with the wartime relaxations of the rule forbidding the use of ball ammunition in field combat exercises and incurred Vandegrift’s undying wrath, leading to the colonel’s early replacement. I heard the general muttering under his breath, “Damned old schoolteacher.”

  After Pearl Harbor I spent a great part of my time at Solomon’s Island on Chesapeake Bay conducting amphibious training exercises. Maj. Gen. Holland M. Smith, Commander, Landing Force Atlantic, and his chief of staff, Col. Graves B. Erskine, set up a headquarters ashore. General Vandegrift and I stayed with them. It was particularly interesting and informative to listen to them discuss the background issues of the war against Japan. The loss of most of our battleships would make impossible a quick attack against the Japanese homeland. This had long been the dream of the thrusters, that faction in the navy advocating an immediate response to a Japanese surprise attack. There was now nothing with which to thrust, at least until the giant new battleships of the North Carolina class joined the fleet. Until then, the island-hopper faction must of necessity hold sway.

  There was frequent reference to a prominent navy war planner, Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner. He was not supposed to be a thruster. Nevertheless, he had delivered a lecture in 1938 indicating that the fleet would go all the way to Japan “on its own tail” (supported solely by ships, without the necessity of establishing bases en route). Such a course would render our Fleet Marine Force superfluous to the main effort—a matter of deep concern to us all.

  The very raison d’etre of the Fleet Marine Force was the seizure and defense of advance bases. The island-hopping plan was firmly tied to Pete Ellis’s brilliant strategy of seizing a series of naval bases to support the advance of the fleet across the Central Pacific, including the recovery of Guam and the Philippines. The plan had remained under constant study in our schools, which annually studied and refined in detail the seizure of Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, and even the Palaus (Babelthuap). Naval officers as well as Marines attended the Marine Corps schools in those days, and their valuable practical input gave the plans added credibility in the eyes of the navy, leading to their eventual acceptance.

  One day all the generals went to Washington for a conference. I returned to the transport Hunter Liggett (AP-27) to supervise the day’s training. After dark, General Vandegrift returned alone and told me he had been appointed to command of the 1st Marine Division, relieving Maj. Gen. Phil Torrey, who was going to Quantico. As division commander he needed to form a new staff and offered me the job of assistant to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas, the new operations officer (D-3).

  I was more than happy to accept. It gave me a chance to serve under one of the most highly esteemed and best-liked officers in the Corps. During World War I Thomas had served with distinction in France, where he was wounded and decorated and earned a field commission. In Haiti, following the war, Jerry distinguished himself in a sharp night combat with a superior Caco force. In the years of peace he had held highly responsible positions and acquired a reputation for outstanding leadership, professionalism, and devotion to our small Corps.

  Responding to General Vandegrift’s constant scrutiny and supervision, the division advanced rapidly toward a state of readiness. We were still armed with the old Springfield rifle and sadly lacking in such new weapons as antitank guns, although we began getting a few, which we put to good use in our training.

  New information as to the employment of the division was discouraging. We were told that our 1st Marine Division would probably be used as a source of smaller cadres to garrison Pacific islands because, due to possible army objections, the navy was reluctant to employ Marine units larger than a regiment. This was a severe blow to morale.

  Our 7th Marines were the first to go out, bound for garrison duty in Samoa. They were going to war, and the rest of us apparently weren’t, so we gave them everything we had—new weapons, scarce equipment, and their choice of officers to bring units up to strength.

  After their departure we concentrated on expanding the 1st Marines, which hitherto had existed as only a small cadre. We had plenty of capable and experienced field officers. Company commanders were largely drawn from officers with good service in the peacetime Marine Corps Reserve. I recall particularly officers like Capt. Charles Brush and 1st Lt. Walter McLlhenny, who rapidly developed the fighting quality of their organizations. However, most of the junior officers were young college men who had just completed officer training at Quantico. I had been associated with this group there and reckoned them to be of unusually high caliber. They were to prove me right, both on the battlefield and in their subsequent careers in civilian life.

  The senior noncommissioned officers were of an older type, ranging from plank owners in navy yards to skilled personnel from weapons ranges and ship’s detachments. Under the leadership of Col. (later Gen.) Clifton B. Cates, they quickly developed into a battle-worthy combat unit that proved its worth at the Tenaru River in mid-August 1942. They progressed rapidly through the basic training cycle, and at least one battalion completed its amphibious training at Solomon’s Island.

  We had little more than said goodbye to the 7th Marines when, to our great relief, the entire division was alerted for an emergency move to the South Pacific. Wellington, New Zealand, was our destination, and there we would be expected to reach a state of readiness permitting our employment “in minor amphibious operations early in 1943.”4 Again, I suspect that the phrase “minor amphibious operations” was employed as a tactful way of assuaging army sensibilities.

  The movement of the 1st Division to New Zealand, although of an emergency nature, was greatly complicated by the unforeseen congestion of wartime traffic that had suddenly overburdened the nation’s transportation facilities, hitherto considered an unlimited resource by military planners. Only one regiment, the 5th Marines (reinforced), plus division headquarters, could be embarked on Wakefield (AP-21), a transport that could carry 6,000 men, and then sail directly from Norfolk, Vi
rginia, via the Panama Canal to New Zealand. Their tanks and other heavy equipment would have to be moved by rail to New Orleans for loading aboard Electra (AK-21), a navy cargo ship, and SS del Brazil, a U.S. merchantman.

  The balance of the division, the 1st Marine Regimental Combat Team, would be moved at an unspecified date by rail to San Francisco, where it would load out on SS Ericsson, a large Scandinavian passenger liner, also destined for Wellington.

  The need for such a complex scheme to move a single division was a sad commentary on the presumably unlimited resources of the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. The situation is even worse today, for we no longer possess the great system of railways that were available to us in 1942. We are now largely dependent on a national system of motor transport that would come to a screeching halt if oil imports were cut off by hostile action, because we no longer possess the vast untapped underground military reserves formerly held back to meet such an emergency. Today’s military planners appear blissfully oblivious of this jarring contingency.

  CHAPTER 3

  Advance Man in New Zealand

  On receiving information of the proposed move to New Zealand, General Vandegrift, accompanied by a small staff group, proceeded to Washington by overnight rail. The general detached himself and conferred with the commandant of the Marine Corps, Lt. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, and with Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, head of War Plans, and Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley, the intended commander, South Pacific Area and South Pacific Force. We in the staff group were briefly introduced and then separated in order to confer with planners at the working level.

  I cannot forget our discussion with the navy’s logistics planner, a handsome, well-uniformed Harvard School of Business Administration type. Unfortunately, he knew little of logistics beyond the details of ship’s supply and nothing at all about the logistics problems confronting a landing force, and he was adamant in his refusal to learn. Lt. Col. Randy Pate, our newly arrived D-4 (logistics), conducted our side of the discussion admirably, but to no avail. The official position was deceptively simple: “The navy will embark sixty days’ supply.” Period.

  Pate explained our recent experiences with navy supply and particularly the matter of troop rations. The navy ration provided fresh meat, eggs, dairy products, and corn flakes in great abundance and in commercial packages. This was satisfactory for ship or supermarket but totally unsuited for the rough trip across a hostile shore in any kind of weather. Furthermore, and of much greater importance, many of these navy components required refrigeration, a service totally unavailable to a landing force. Pate quite reasonably insisted that the rations embarked be modified by the substitution of increased quantities of canned meat, evaporated milk, and other dry stores more suited to the inhospitable landing-force environment ashore.

  Our informant’s only reply was the single phrase, “the navy will embark sixty days’ supply.” Pate pressed him sharply, but he clung to his position like a drunk to a lamppost: “The navy will embark sixty days’ supply.”

  And so they did. And so Aotea Quay in Wellington and later Red Beach in Guadalcanal were ankle deep in a mushy melange of corn flakes, Quaker Oats, and Post Toasties as the driving rains of a South Pacific winter dissolved the flimsy cardboard containers dumped ashore. What an unnecessary waste.

  In the afternoon it was my turn to shine as we conferred with two members of the Anzac military mission to the United States, a New Zealand lieutenant colonel, retreaded from World War I, and a bright young Australian captain. As the advance man charged with arranging for the construction of our camps and facilities in the Wellington area, I was interested in ascertaining what construction items could be obtained in New Zealand and what items we would have to bring with us. Must we plan for just the movement of the division or, in effect, the removal of its base as well? The logistical impact on a small country would be considerable in the latter case, for we would have to contract for materials locally produced in an isolated nation whose young men had gone to war some two years earlier. The results of our discussions were not altogether satisfactory, but it was a great improvement over the morning’s fiasco.

  We took the night train back to North Carolina. En route General Vandegrift briefed us on his visit to War Plans. Essentially we would complete our training in New Zealand, attaining a state of readiness sufficient to undertake minor amphibious operations sometime after 1 January 1943.

  I was given a one-page letter of instructions and a set of air priority travel orders. The letter directed me to report to the New Zealand Army authorities at Wellington and secure their assistance in the procurement and construction of facilities suitable for the cantonment and training of a reinforced Marine division—approximately 13,000 men—in the Wellington area. Also, I was to inform the New Zealand authorities that we were to be ready to undertake minor amphibious operations after 1 January 1943.

  I was accompanied by Chief Quartermaster Clerk Harry Detwiler, who had been provided with a $50,000 check to cover the costs of the project. Much to my relief, the check was never cashed. A wonderful international mechanism known as Lend-Lease picked up the tab in New Zealand.

  We flew on Pan American Airlines’ comfortable China Clipper from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor. At Pearl, I was interrogated by two crafty naval officers of Nimitz’s staff, who seemed more interested in command politics than in the war. After satisfying themselves that I was just a dumb Marine from North Carolina, they sent me by auto into Honolulu, where Detwiler and I stayed first class at the beachfront Moana Hotel.

  The still jittery island was under a military curfew, and people spooked at the strike of a match. Everything was completely blacked out, and the hotel night clerk even objected to Detwiler and me conferring in my room as we tried to plan for what lay ahead of us. Before daylight we were picked up for the ride to NAS Ford Island to catch our plane. The trip to Pearl Harbor was slowed by frequent stops for inspection by the military and civilian police, who apparently were not satisfied with the degree to which our headlights had been blacked out with blue paint.

  At Ford Island we boarded a navy PBM, the most beautiful flying boat I have ever seen, although the smaller but more efficient PBY became the flying workhorse of the Pacific War. Our PBM was commanded by Comdr. Bill Rassieur, friend and classmate of Naval Academy days. He ran a ship as taut as any man-o’-war and was ably seconded by Comdr. Sam Pickering, another old friend. Rassieur and Pickering seemed unusually curious about what I was up to. Years later Bill told me that I had been assigned—undoubtedly by mistake—an astronomically high flight priority usually reserved for VIPs of Olympic stature. That also explains the reason for the persistent questioning I got at CinCPac. Undoubtedly the two debriefing officers there believed that my story about camp building in New Zealand was a cover-up for something about which Admiral Nimitz, the commander in chief, Pacific, ought to know.

  The trip to Auckland, New Zealand, took five days with overnight stays at Johnston and Canton Islands, Suva, and Noumea. The Marine garrison at Johnston was on its toes getting set for an expected Japanese attack. Morale was high, and they were grimly determined to get even for the loss of Wake.

  At Canton we ran into Lt. John D. Bulkeley and the other torpedo boat commander who had recently brought the MacArthur party out of the Philippines. They were headed home. We stayed in adjoining rooms in what had been the old Pan Am guest house. Far into the night the PT boat commanders regaled us with the story of their breakout and perilous journey. They spoke warmly of MacArthur but were more than a little critical of some of the staff officers who accompanied him and who tried to force Bulkeley to abandon the crew of one of the two PT boats when it became disabled. To his credit Bulkeley stoutly asserted his proper authority as commanding officer and determinedly enforced the law of the sea, which from time immemorial has denounced the abandonment of those exposed to its wanton cruelties. Bulkeley appeared modest and reserved. The other skipper—the one who would have been left behind—was far
more outgoing and, understandably, somewhat more vehement.

  Bulkeley went on to a most distinguished career, winning the Medal of Honor and retiring as a vice admiral after fiftynine years’ service, the longest U.S. naval career on record.

  At Suva we stayed in a fine British hotel but found the East Indian staff in a state of near mutiny. They apparently sensed that a Japanese takeover was at hand and that, as members of the new Japanese Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, they would be able to revenge themselves on the British Raj. They were surly to the point of outright insolence, refused to perform many customary hotel services, but insisted on large tips. The British management, in despair, pleaded with us to put up with their malarkey and were terrified that someone of our party would succumb to the urge toward physical violence, which in their minds is always associated with Americans. I admit the temptation was great. Similar conduct was reported from Singapore before that bastion fell without putting up a fight.

  We arrived in Noumea to find that the U.S. Americal Division had taken over after some shadowboxing with the surly and uncooperative Free French. New Caledonia’s large nickel deposits were a vital element in our nation’s fast-expanding arms production. Canadian resources of that metal proved inadequate for the vast program planned for the immediate future.

  Our naval presence appeared very sketchy. The seaplane tender Tangier (AV-8) and two squadrons of PBYs appeared to be the only U.S. Navy forces left in the South Pacific area following the Battle of the Coral Sea. We overnighted on board Tangier, whose three-stripe exec seemed more interested in collecting our mess bills than in doing anything else, even though this was usually the collateral duty of a very junior officer.