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Keyword: guadalcanal

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  • Marines, Not Soldiers

    04/11/2002 5:40:38 AM PDT · by gunnyg · 94 replies · 1,065+ views
    Tampa Tribune ^ | As shown
    Marines, Not Soldiers Published: Jan 28, 2002 I have a complaint about some of the news readers for the local television stations, and I am sure there are countless other Marines with the same one. It is galling to hear the news readers referring to Marines as ``soldiers.'' Marines are not soldiers; they are Marines and always will be. There is no such thing as an ex-Marine or a former Marine. We are all ``Marines,'' period. Soldiers are members of the Army and sailors are members of the Navy. You wouldn't call a soldier a sailor, so why would you...
  • "throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete"

    02/19/2005 4:26:30 AM PST · by PopGonzalez · 4 replies · 287+ views
    wthomassmithjr.com ^ | February 19, 2005 | W. Thomas Smith Jr.
    "throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete." Sixty years ago today, U.S. Navy landing craft loaded with thousands of U.S. Marines began churning toward a tiny, eight-square-mile chunk of volcanic rock jutting out the Pacific Ocean. The island, Iwo Jima, was about to become the scene of a month long battle between U.S. forces and Iwo's Japanese defenders. It was a battle that some historians have since described as “throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete.” It would define the modern Marine Corps. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would gasp in horror upon learning of the American casualties (7,000 Americans were killed, another...
  • Rumours of War: Guadalcanal Diary and the Combat Movie

    11/19/2023 7:50:53 AM PST · by Rummyfan · 65 replies
    Steyn Online ^ | 18 Nov 2023 | Rick McGinnis
    Guadalcanal Diary is the first real American combat document of World War Two, written by a war correspondent who had gone ashore with the Marines in the first U.S. ground offensive in the Pacific. Richard Tregaskis wrote it for an audience who were desperate to know what their sons, husbands, brothers and friends were experiencing as soldiers, fighting an enemy they probably hadn't given much though to just over a year earlier.It's an actual diary, compiled from Tregaskis' notes, and amidst the accounts of encounters and movement and excitement and discomfort you'd expect from a diary, it has occasional moments...
  • UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS BIRTHDAY - November 10

    11/10/2023 5:22:06 AM PST · by Red Badger · 33 replies
    National Day Calendar ^ | November 10, 2023 | Staff
    UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS BIRTHDAY On November 10th, The United States Marine Corps Birthday commemorates the establishment of the Continental Marines. #MarineCorpsBirthday The United States Marine Corps, a branch of the United States Armed Forces, is responsible for providing power protection from the sea. They use the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. The Continental Congress first established the Continental Marines on November 10, 1775, leading up to the American Revolution. Two battalions of Marines fought for independence both on land and at sea. The birth of the U.S. Marine Corps began as a...
  • Solomon Islands Suspends All US Naval Visits

    08/30/2022 8:10:51 PM PDT · by george76 · 55 replies
    The Epoch Times ^ | August 30, 2022 | Daniel Y. Teng
    The Solomon Islands has informed U.S. authorities that all naval visits have been suspended until further notice following an earlier incident on Aug. 23 when a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, the Oliver Henry, was denied permission for a scheduled port call. The incident comes amid mounting concerns about Beijing’s influence in the region and Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s moves to deepen ties with the Chinese regime while solidifying his hold on power. According to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra: “On Aug. 29, the United States received formal notification from the Government of the Solomon Islands regarding a moratorium on...
  • ‘Nothing left’: Solomon Islanders wander torched capital as Australian troops arrive

    11/25/2021 11:11:34 PM PST · by blueplum · 14 replies
    WaPo via msn ^ | 25 November 2021 | Michael E. Miller
    ...As residents took to the streets on Friday after the end of a 36-hour lockdown in Honiara, however, there was not yet any sign of the Australian peacekeepers, according to local journalist Georgina Kekea. And rioting continued in the center and east of the city. “It still hasn’t settled,” Kekea said in an interview. “I’ve been to Chinatown. There is basically nothing left there. There are only six buildings that are still standing, but otherwise most of the shops have been looted and burned. Scavengers are now … trying to look for whatever they can to carry back home.”.. ...Many...
  • One Marine, One Ship

    10/25/2020 4:12:27 PM PDT · by DuncanWaring · 42 replies
    Originally Las Vegas Review-Journal ^ | 22 Oct 2000 | Vin Suprynowicz
    Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday 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 58 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...
  • Don Adams has died (Get Smart)

    09/26/2005 11:12:18 AM PDT · by Borges · 266 replies · 10,631+ views
    Alt Obits | 9/25/05
    Don Adams, who gained worldwide fame and three Emmy Awards starring as Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, in the classic television comedy GET SMART, died at 8:02 p.m PDT, Sunday, September 25, 2005, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills. He was 82. Although he had been in failing health for more than two years due to bone lymphoma, his death resulted from a sudden lung infection for which he was hospitalized the previous day. Born Donald James Yarmy on April 13, 1923 [correct, despite frequently reported erroneous dates] in New York City to Irish-Hungarian parents, Adams hoped for an engineering career....
  • The First Battle of Savo Island

    09/26/2020 10:40:51 AM PDT · by NRx · 13 replies
    YouTube ^ | 09-23-2020 | Drachinifel
    An excellent video covering the First Battle of Savo Island in the Guadalcanal Campaign. Not our Navy's finest hour, but we learned some hard lessons that would serve us well in the future.
  • Battleship Night Action Naval Battle of Guadalcanal November 1942

    11/13/2019 7:02:01 PM PST · by topher · 48 replies
    Excerpt from Book: Operational Experience of Fast Battleships: World War II, Korea, Vietnam ^ | 1989, pp 61 - 67 | Second Edition, compiled and edited by John C. Reilly, Jr., Naval Historical Center, Dept of Navy
    In this decisive action WASHINGTON and SOUTH DAKOTA engaged a Japanese force termed around the battleship KIRISHIMA. SOUTH DAKOTA suffered extensive topside damage, but WASHINGTON's accurate fire mortally injured KIRISHIMA. Set aflame and racked by explosions, KIRISHIMA was scuttled by her crew. The last major Japanese naval thrust at Guadalcanal had been turned back, and WASHINGTON had done what she had been designed to do -- sink one of her own kind in a gunnery action. WASHINGTON was the only American fast battleship to defeat another capital ship. WASHINGTON ACTION REPORT On the night of November 14-15 WASHINGTON was flagship...
  • Colonel Mitchell Paige

    08/11/2019 6:00:05 PM PDT · by robowombat · 10 replies
    Gathering of Eagles ^ | Col. James D. Coy
    “My parents and teachers instilled in me a devout love of God, family, and country. When I left home after high school to enlist in the Marines, my God-fearing mother admonished me to ‘Just trust in God always.’ Six years later, right after the fierce battle on Guadalcanal, I emptied the contents of my combat pack, and be-cause of my burned hands, I gingerly picked up my pocket New Testament which included the Psalms and Proverbs. The page prov-identially opened to Proverbs 3:5-6: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all...
  • Today in military history: 12-year-old earns Purple Heart, Bronze Star in Guadalcanal

    11/15/2018 12:59:47 PM PST · by fugazi · 42 replies
    Unto the Breach ^ | Nov. 15, 2018 | Chris Carter
    1942: Off Guadalcanal, the U.S. and Japanese fleets engage in one of only two battleship-on-battleship engagements of the Pacific War. While Kirishima hammers USS South Dakota (BB-57) in the early morning hours, USS Washington (BB-56) slips away undetected and maneuvers to near point-blank range, raking the Japanese battleship with devastating salvos. Japanese naval guns and torpedoes send three U.S. destroyers (Walke, Preston, and Benham) to the bottom of Ironbottom Sound, while U.S. warplanes destroy four troop transport ships carrying soldiers and badly needed supplies. The Allies have inflicted such heavy losses on the Japanese that they abandon the mission to...
  • On this date in 1942

    08/07/2017 4:20:44 PM PDT · by Bull Snipe · 29 replies
    USMC Major General Vandergrift landed his 11,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division on the island of Guadalcanal. The next 6 months would show the world the mettle of the fighting men of our Marine Corp.
  • The Boy Who Became a World War II Veteran at 13 Years Old

    04/01/2016 5:14:25 PM PDT · by Jet Jaguar · 67 replies
    Smithsonian Mag ^ | DECEMBER 19, 2012 | By Gilbert King
    In 1942, Seaman Calvin Graham was decorated for valor in battle. Then his mother learned where he'd been and revealed his secret to the Navy. With powerful engines, extensive firepower and heavy armor, the newly christened battleship USS South Dakota steamed out of Philadelphia in August of 1942 spoiling for a fight. The crew was made up of “green boys”—new recruits who enlisted after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor—who had no qualms about either their destination or the action they were likely to see. Brash and confident, the crew couldn’t get through the Panama Canal fast enough, and their...
  • Revisiting TFP.org And Its Search for Culture Reflections On Women In Combat

    02/09/2016 8:51:16 AM PST · by Sean_Anthony · 3 replies
    Canada Free Press ^ | 02/09/16 | Jerry McConnell
    One can't help but wonder if the drastic and yes, insane order to assign females to duties requiring the karma of men in bloody actions not for the gentle make-up of females, will be a fatal decision for our military. Barack Obama, no Catholic lover; or even, Christian liker, bent on eliminating any form of Christianity from the almost 240-year-old established United States of America, positioned himself to effectively take a full quiver of arrows of divisiveness when just days before the highly sacred Christian day of celebration of the Birth of Jesus Christ, had his Secretary of Defense announce...
  • US Marine Corps Birthday - Nov. 10th

    11/08/2002 5:10:53 AM PST · by Stars N Stripes · 102 replies · 1,324+ views
    11/8/2002 | Me
    Just a reminder... Photo Courtesy of Fontman.com
  • One Marine, One Ship

    11/21/2001 11:08:32 AM PST · by Britton J Wingfield · 51 replies · 1,493+ views
    One Marine, One Ship by Vin Suprynowicz OCT. 22, 2000 Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday 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 58 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, ...
  • In history's trenches

    04/28/2006 7:40:37 AM PDT · by SmithL · 4 replies · 127+ views
    Contra Costa Times ^ | 4/28/6 | Brooke Bryant
    Ed Berman doesn't just collect war stories. He rescues them from the scrapheap of history. Take the woman in World War II so slender she was lowered head first to weld between ships' hulls. Or the American captured by Italian troops, who escaped when his plane crashed on the way to a prison camp, then fought alongside Italian partisans until he was captured by the Germans. And the man whose combat wound saved him from making the Bataan Death March, but not from the tin mines in Japan, where he weighed 85 pounds when rescued. "His wife said afterwards, she...
  • True grit - A review of Twenty-Five Yards of War

    12/11/2001 10:37:38 AM PST · by gordgekko · 1 replies · 1+ views
    Enter Stage Right - A Journal of Modern Conservatism ^ | December 10, 2001 | Steven Martinovich
    Enter Stage Right - A Journal of Modern Conservatism Twenty-Five Yards of War The Extraordinary Courage of Ordinary Men in World War II By Ronald J. Drez Hyperion Books HC, 296 pgs. US$23.95/C$32.95 True grit By Steven Martinovich Until that first shot is fired in combat, no one can know what kind of soldier they will be. Our daydreams may cast us as Alvin York, the World War I hero who killed 25 Germans, knocked out 35 machine guns and captured 132 prisoners almost single-handedly at the battle of the Argonne Forest in the fall of 1918, but the grim ...
  • Joe Foss, WWII Hero and Former South Dakota Governor, Dies at 87

    01/01/2003 4:40:46 PM PST · by Cagey · 85 replies · 4,823+ views
    AP ^ | 1-1-2003
    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Joe Foss, a former South Dakota governor and World War II hero who shot down 26 enemy planes, died Wednesday. He was 87. Foss had not regained consciousness after he suffered an apparent aneurysm last fall. He died at a hospital in Arizona, said South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow. A Republican, Foss served in the state Legislature for five years before becoming governor in 1955. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor as a Marine pilot during World War II. He also earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. "I always had the attitude that every day...