A Marine Diary: My Experiences on Guadalcanal

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get on and pretty much have a panoramic view of the whole bay. I remember seeing a big air raid come in and black anti-aircraft fire was coming crazy from all the ships in the harbor -- all kind of puffs of smoke hit the sky. In fact there were 16 torpedo bombers come over and I don't think they hit a thing; they were all being shot down and I think one or two got past the fleet. Our planes were after them too. And way out there on the horizon, we saw the last one go down -- all of them were shot down -- we could see the fire and the smoke. These were big two motor bombers: Japanese bombers burn real good."

My name is James R. "Rube" Garrett. I was a Corporal, ammo chief for I Battery, 3rd Battalion, 11th Regiment and a charter member of the 1st Marine Division, formed in Cuba in 1940. The following are my diary entries for the Battle of Guadalcanal. A glance through the pages shows while we were there, 59 enemy air raids flew in. That doesn't include many false alarms and ...

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other Marines unloaded our ship, the Erickson, and loaded onto the Marine Transport USS McCauley.

Preparing for combat, we made several long hikes in New Zealand to keep us conditioned for what lay ahead. We left New Zealand on the 21st of July, sailed around the Pacific and made practice landings on the Fiji Islands. We would disembark from the ship, climb down the nets, onto the Higgins Boats and go in toward the beach. But we never actually landed. We would then turn around and return to the ship. We were informed on August 3rd at a non-commissioned officers conference there, by Lt. Bradbury (later to become Captain), I Battery Commander, that we were to land on Guadalcanal in the ...

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