 Guadalcanal was our first landing in the Pacific and We hadn't quite got all the pieces of the puzzle together there And and of course the other one of the things that was very difficult there the question of Sea superiority, I guess you could say was very much in doubt We didn't own the ocean around Guadalcanal as we did at later battles And so there was constant naval Attacks between our forces and the Japanese Unopposed landing the we got ashore and captured the airfield Which we named Henderson field in the honor of one of our marine aviators lost at Midway and what happened was? We were able to land over an open beach Unopposed and everything went reasonably well the fighting that occurred occurred mostly later Guadalcanal we had the LCP L and we had an LCP and LCMs, but no LCVP hadn't been developed yet. We had made practice landings at Honslow Beach in North Carolina over and over and over We made so many practice landings and offloaded Into landing craft the mortar platoon and machine gun company. We had to have the ramps We had a lot of Higgins boats for the rifle companies that had no ramps now We did make some practice landings with them with the mortar, but it was it was almost impossible to Get a base plate up and over the gunnel of that thing and Into a water that was Waste deep and all you know it just was nearly nearly couldn't be done the training was always get off the beach That's basic you're You're to come ashore and you're to get off the beach spread out as much as possible the life aboard a troopship is so Bad that you're anxious to get off of that damn troopship. It doesn't matter If you're blown off of it, but you know you're packed in there like sardines you Are on that thing Week after week after week with no fresh water showers. No way to wash your clothes Two meals a day. We were so young and so stupid and we had no concept of what war was supposed to be like or anything No We were not nervous. We figured that somebody knew what was supposed to be done and that The good Lord would take care of us, but as far as sitting around chewing on our fingernails There wasn't any of that at all. We were really happy to get off of that thing Even if it meant we were gonna be killed. We weren't we weren't nervous. We just wanted off of that troopship where we landed the The coconut trees came right down to the beach I remember it was black sand we came out of the Ramp and there was a rifle company guys sitting on coconuts opening them and laughing at us Cuz we we just knew that we would all be killed in the first few minutes, you know They were sitting there laughing at us. So we joined in and started opening coconuts The Japanese had no troops on there when they landed it was just maybe Engineers and the rest of them were Corian workers Took a regular while before they got many troops on that the first ones came on me About a thousand little don't kick us off then we left those coconut trees behind us and walked on Through some grass and scrubby jungle they had run into a Stream that they could not cross and we called it the Tenoroo there was a corpsman said oh, I had been up there yesterday. I know exactly where you are up in the Tenoroo River So I said Where is it? He said well, I'll tell you he said there's quite a few jeeps running around and if you Grab a Jeep or ask him to give you a ride up to where each company is tell him on the Tenoroo River the Tenoroo Episode really began Days and nights ahead of time because There was night after night after night there when nothing happened I Say nothing happened You spend the whole night listening They had given us 55 rounds to last for the night and only you could fire it on it and they said when you had the Gift of an opportunity meaning when a flare went off and you could see the Japanese You could fire it, but you can't just keep firing. We'd be out of ammunition a half hour We knew we were going to get attacked that night and we were all very set up and The Japanese when they came across they came across almost You might say in a group of just crazy Banzai chides screaming and yelling and We fired it and all the machine guns What have you opened up on the Tenoroo River and it was a pretty lively action When the battle commenced It was different. It wasn't Friendly fire or somebody had heard a cow or somebody had Heard a Iguana or something. I mean the whole world erupted up and down the The lines every once in a while when a flare went off and you could see Japanese we would fire this this 37 millimeter cannon with a grape shot and You could see them and when you fired it all of a sudden it was all clear You couldn't see any Japanese and it wiped them out. It was dark, but there was a lot of flashing from all the Fire and all there was no cheering or anything like that following the battle people felt pretty happy that we Won it but you could Look out there and see all these bodies and it makes you think a little bit how You know how short life can be they look like radiasmarines You know how that is the clothes are half worn out and Shears a half right it off and they already begin to lose weight left and right They were glad to see us because we brought ten units of fire The unit of fire is All that a one division can shoot up in one day. We went aboard Higgins boats and went Up to the beach. It's a pretty good ways To a place where it's Mount Austin and we landed on a post And forced our way in but we've got very short distance until we ran into great numbers of Japanese and Puller found out we were in trouble and he came off the Montana car He had one company one of our companies on the Montana car yet and got in touch with one of the old four-stack of destroyers And they had five-inch guns and they had a battery five-inch guns, so they were Talking to each other by semaphore. That's the flag And we forced that way back to the beach The Coast Guard came in and picked us up That was when a man named one row in the Coast Guard was awarded to Medal of Honor the only Medal of Honor Coast Guardsman ever got He was instrumental in getting his boats back in the town and pick us off that beach It was a real snafu if Chesty puller had not been able to evacuate those Marines the Japanese would undoubtedly overrun and slaughter them The worst thing I ever went through in my whole life was October 12th, 1942 two battleships for Cruisers and a bunch of cans pulled in the slot and dropped anchor and just proceeded to shell the hell out of us At to the tune of about 1,014 inch and I don't know how many 12 and 10s and nearly everybody on the island had a concussion of some kind and Those big rounds of the land close to you'd bleed from the nose in the mouth. That's when I lost my hearing We put everything we had entered so did they because Whoever the powers to be knew that who won that thing Was going to take over the war