Word: war
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Marine Division was the first U.S. division to take the offensive in War II. It went into the boondocks as a brigade in the fall of 1940 and did not come out until it licked the Japanese at Guadalcanal two years later. Between times the division learned to take it-from Solomons Island (Md.) to the Solomon Islands (Pacific), an 8,600-mile jump...
During its four months on Guadalcanal the division was almost written off several times. When asked whether the hard-pressed leathernecks could hold the first beachhead in the Pacific war, Navy Secretary Knox said: "I don't want to make any predictions, but every man out there, ashore or afloat, will give a good account of himself." When this word came to Guadalcanal one sergeant mused: "Ya know, they're kicking up a stink about us back in the States." Said a private first class: "That's nice...
Rocks for Charles Boyer. From Australia, General MacArthur sent the1st Division to Cape Gloucester, which was so miserable one sergeant swore: "In the next war I ain't even gonna plant a victory garden." The Japs weren't too numerous, but Hill 660 was steep and slippery and it rained all the time. "The wells of fountain pens clogged; pencils came apart at the seams in less than a week, blades of pocket knives rusted together," McMillan remembers. Shellfire caused giant, rotten trees to tremble and fall; 25 men died as victims of such odd accidents of jungle...
Stern as the battle proved to be, Gloucester was not as bad as the next "rest camp," Pavuvu, and neither-in some ways-was Peleliu, where the division again caught the full fury of war in the Pacific. Pavuvu is a stinking, rat-infested little island in the Solomons, fit neither for marine nor Gook. Some men went "Asiatic" (regular Marine lingo for rock-happy). A sentry walked his muddy post for four hours, stopped at the last tent as his relief reported, put his rifle to his mouth and blew the top of his head off. This seemed...
...time the division had won its 19th Medal of Honor and its 18,337th Purple Heart after Okinawa, it was ready to take on more replacements and train for the invasion of Japan. But soon the war was over and all hands were on their way to China...