Opinion: Long-Delayed Video Game
Delivers Realistic Depiction of Iraq Battle
War has forever been entwined with popular culture. Artists have attempted to replicate, with great attention to detail, iconic scenes of countless battles. Homer’s “Iliad” was spread throughout antiquity as poets recited the mythological history of the Trojan War. Many of today’s Marines were first exposed to the history of the Corps through literary accounts such as “Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific,” by Robert Leckie or Eugene Sledge’s “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa.” With the creation of film, and movies such as “Saving Private Ryan,” storytelling evolved, redefining how war was presented to the public. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that video games—as a form of entertainment—would take up the mantle of trying to depict war within popular culture.
As long as storytellers, writers, artists, filmmakers, and game designers tried to replicate war, controversy closely followed. Painters have been accused of glorifying war. Poet Walt Whitman claimed, “The real war will never get in the books.” Director Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” was labeled by a writer from the New York Observer as a “pornography of violence and cruelty.” A World War II-themed videogame directed by Spielberg, titled “Medal of Honor,” became so mired in controversy that it was almost pulled from release before now being recognized as one of the greatest first-person shooters on the PlayStation platform. Ultimately, the question as to whether war should be depicted in popular culture is moot—as storytellers and creators will always adapt their depictions of war with evolving media. Rather, we should be asking how to best depict war in popular culture. Enter “Six Days in Fallujah.”
“Six Days in Fallujah,” a first-person shooter (FPS) game, simulates the chaos of urban warfare. (Photo courtesy of Victura)
The Fight
On Nov. 7, 2004, the city of Fallujah, Iraq, ignited into a conflagration as Marines and soldiers of U.S.-led coalition forces launched Operation Phantom Fury to rid the city of militant Islamic extremists in what would be later called the Second Battle of Fallujah. The insurgents had turned the city into a fortress complete with tunnels, trenches, spider holes and improvised explosive devices of all varieties. Further complicating the coalition assault were the thousands of civilians who were unable to evacuate the city and remained hidden on every block. In the ensuing one month, two weeks, and two days, the Marines and members of the coalition fought in the bloodiest instance of urban combat in the 21st century—only to be surpassed almost two decades later with the ongoing war in Ukraine. The cost was terrible. Close to 100 Americans died and more than 500 were wounded. In addition, there were over 60 coalition casualties, the insurgents were largely annihilated, and at least 800 civilians were killed. Controversy closely followed the battle, as various media outlets reported on the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions, the extensive civilian casualties, the destruction wrought upon the city, and both real and supposed atrocities committed by both coalition and insurgent forces. Despite this, the Second Battle of Fallujah has become enshrined within the pantheon of Marine Corps battles—further demonstrating the combat prowess of the Corps against all enemies.
Sgt Eddie Garcia fought in the Battle of Fallujah and wanted to develop a game based on his experience in combat. Courtesy of Victura.
During game development, former infantry officer Capt Read Omohundro describes the Marines’ encounter with the enemy during the battle. Courtesy of Victura.
Among the wounded Marines was Sergeant Eddie Garcia, who was seriously injured by an insurgent-fired mortar. His fellow Marines managed to stop the bleeding and bring him to safety at a nearby field hospital before he was transferred to Baghdad, then Germany, and eventually to the United States. Upon returning home, Garcia reached out to Peter Tamte—a video game developer with Atomic Games.
The two had met before the battle. Garcia had been sent by the Marine Corps to be their subject matter expert for various training simulations that Atomic Games was developing. Throughout developing these Marine Corps training simulations, the two got to know each other quite well, with Garcia providing keen insight into how Marines fought and operated. However, when Garcia approached Tamte after his return home, it was not to develop another training simulation—he wanted to develop a video game based on the battle he had just fought.
The idea of a game quickly went from concept to reality. As the veterans of the Second Battle of Fallujah began returning to the United States when their deployments ended, Tamte and Atomic Games began conducting interviews with dozens of Marines who were willing to share their experiences. The interviews were expanded to include Iraqis who survived the battle. Recurring motifs from these interviews were the uncertainty and intimacy of close-quarters combat, the fear of what lurked behind the next door, the utter necessity of teamwork, the difficulty of fighting a radical enemy that could easily blend into a terrified civilian populace, and the combat fatigue induced by constant fighting and witnessing death regularly. It soon became apparent that the game needed to be grounded in realism and authenticity—both in gameplay and storytelling.
The game’s development was formally announced in 2009 and was planned for a 2010 release. However, problems began to arise. The controversy of the Battle of Fallujah and the public distaste for American intervention in the Middle East reared their heads. Some argued that the game’s subject was too recent to tastefully be depicted in a video game; others argued that the game would negatively depict Muslims by their worst stereotypes and devolve into a racist kill simulator; and some accused the developers of creating a propaganda piece that glorified a conflict that many viewed to be unjust. The controversy spawned by this criticism pushed the game’s publisher, Konami, to suspend its role in the project in April 2009. Within two years, Atomic Games went into bankruptcy—putting the future of “Six Days in Fallujah” into question.
Despite this series of obstacles, Tamte held onto hope. He eventually formed a new gaming company, Victura, to carry the mantle of producing “Six Days in Fallujah,” with developers from games such as “Halo” and “Destiny” jumping on board to help finish the project. Within two years, in late June, an early access version of the game became available for purchase via Steam. Since its release, “Six Days in Fallujah” has undergone a few updates, and the completed version will be available in 2024. Currently, the game is limited to online cooperative mode with teams of up to four people. However, a single-player campaign is in development. Based on the available content, we can begin to disseminate how “Six Days in Fallujah” authentically depicts war as a means of popular culture and to what degree it maintains authenticity.
Courtesy of VicturaPlayers are provided with a unique experience each playthrough. Gameplay includes environmental immersion, differing map designs and relentless enemies.
Gameplay
Upon starting the game, the player is presented with a short film (with a History Channel-esque vibe) describing the situation with period footage, photography and interviews. Loading screens include images of veterans and Iraqi survivors accompanied by their quotes describing the battle. From this onset, the player realizes they are part of a real story with real people—not a generic war story where the characters are made up. In doing so, the game is trying to place players into the shoes of someone who took part in this battle—putting extra emotional weight behind the experience they are about to have.
After assembling a team in the co-op mode lobby, players are then thrust into a generated situation to accomplish a randomized mission, such as locating and destroying an enemy supply cache, securing an enemy strongpoint, or repelling waves of attacks supported by vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIED). To replicate the fear of not knowing what lurks behind every door, “Six Days in Fallujah” employs a map-design randomizer feature that creates new maps every playthrough: buildings will not appear in the same place, entrances will be along different walls, enemies will not hide behind the same doors, etc. This randomizer is perhaps the strongest feature of gameplay, as it forces the players to handle each situation uniquely, rather than memorizing a cookie-cutter scenario as in most other first-person shooters.
The learning curve for playing “Six Days in Fallujah” is steep and the gameplay is unforgiving—reminiscent of the famed game “Oregon Trail”: you can easily die at any time, for any reason, in any possible way. Snipers fire with deadly accuracy should you expose yourself for too long; mortars can wipe out an entire team with a single round; the enemy will fix your team with machinegun fire while a VBIED rolls up your flank and detonates behind you; insurgents will fire at you between cracks of war-torn buildings; your team can easily be caught in the fatal funnel of every doorway; the list is endless. This is not your typical run-and-gun game. The weapons feel weighted, and the recoil must be accounted for when pulling the trigger. Wounds must be bandaged; injured teammates must be assisted to get back into the fight; and ammunition can only be replenished at your AAV. Additionally, to quote Murphy’s law of combat operations: “Friendly fire isn’t,” which was a hard-learned lesson while clearing buildings. Many first-person shooter gamers may not be used to the slower pacing of the game; however, many gamers—some of whom served in combat—have applauded the game’s pacing as being more realistic.
You learn quickly that teamwork is the only way to accomplish missions—and even that does not guarantee success. If you try to move too fast, your team can get caught in an ambush; move too slow, the enemy can gain the initiative and outmaneuver your position; stay too close together, a single grenade can wipe your team; and spread too far out, you risk being defeated in detail. From my own experiences, of the 30 games played by myself and with two teammates, we were defeated within two minutes on 18 attempts, lasted longer than five minutes on 11, and accomplished the objective once. However, with proper coordination, patience and a basic understanding of the principles of fire-and-maneuver tactics, players can fight and win in the labyrinth of Fallujah.
Ultimately, “Six Days in Fallujah” is an experience akin to a horror-survival game that strives to ground its gameplay in a higher level of depth and realism. To an extent, the game is a teaching tool as much as it is a means of entertainment. Yes, not every feature is perfect as some reviewers have pointed out, but with the game still being in development, time allows for the edges to be smoothed out for greater historical accuracy. However, in an era where Nicki Minaj is a playable character in “Call of Duty” and where “Battlefield V” bastardized World War II with historically inaccurate character customizations, “Six Days of Fallujah” is a breath of fresh air for those who want a historical experience when gaming. And to those who question as to whether this game is coming out “too soon,” I respond with this:
After over 20 years of fighting two wars, many Americans cannot name a single battle or recall any cities in Iraq or Afghanistan besides maybe Baghdad. To them, places such as Fallujah, Marjah, Mosul, Basra, or Kandahar mean nothing. They cannot recall any place where their tax dollars sent our country’s finest to fight and die in wars that were fought for reasons that are increasingly unclear to the general public. What “Six Days in Fallujah” has done is keep the Iraq War in the public consciousness, to remind us that these wars involved real people who had to live with the consequences of being in monumental historical situations. It portrays war as a human experience and attempts to do so as accurately as possible. If “Six Days in Fallujah” can encourage a young gamer to reflect upon the struggles of the Iraq War, watch an educational film on the subject, or read histories or biographies from survivors, then the game has served its purpose.
For now, gamers must be content with the available cooperative mode. Only with the release of a single-player campaign can we truly understand the full extent to which “Six Days in Fallujah” can be used to tell the story of one of the Marine Corps’ most hard-fought battles in Iraq.
Author’s note: I would like to thank Danny Roldan and Ricc Donate-Perez for playtesting “Six Days in Fallujah” with me to help write this article.
Author’s bio: William Treuting is an editor and content creator for the Marine Corps Gazette. He is a cohost of the MCA’s “Scuttlebutt” podcast and director of MCA Films.
As the Marine Corps has shifted its focus toward forward deployed expeditionary forces at strategic points in the Pacific, particularly Guam, it is worth looking at what occurred there in the first few days after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941.
Because Guam fell quickly, histories of the period have largely treated the event as little more than a footnote. As a result, very few people are aware of the brief but furious and courageous defense by fewer than 100 Marines, Sailors and Guamanian Insular Guardsmen in the early morning hours of Dec. 10, 1941, at the Plaza de Espana in the capital of Agana. All lacked combat experience and some Guardsmen were without weapons. The Guardsmen had never fired their three machine guns. Outnumbered more than four to one, outgunned and facing almost suicidal odds, the steadfast defenders displayed extraordinary courage in standing their ground. None deserted their post, and all performed their duty.
The Marine NCOs and junior enlisted defending the Plaza displayed exceptional heroism despite believing they had no chance of survival, even if captured. As hundreds of Japanese troops descended on the Plaza, Sergeant George Shane, leader of the Marine Insular Patrol defenders was quoted in “Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam” as saying, “On a scale of one to 10, our pucker factor was a 15 at that instant.” While the Japanese would claim their occupation of Guam was “bloodless,” official historian Samuel Eliot Morrison noted, “Both the Americans and Chamorros put up a brave resistance and twice drove the attacking force back with rifle and machine-gun fire, losing 17 of their men but killing and wounding a much greater number of Japanese.”
Guam, an American territory since 1898, is the southernmost island in the Marianas chain and is a mountainous island with jungle 20 miles long and a width of 12 miles or less. The population in 1941 was some 23,000, consisting mainly of native Chamorros and a few hundred Americans, mostly Navy and Marine personnel, civilian construction workers and a few employees of Pan Am who operated a seaplane Clipper service and small hotel for passengers transiting the Pacific. The capital and largest city is Agana on Guam’s north coast, located about 5 miles north of Apra harbor. In 1941, there was no airfield or American air forces on the island. By the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Conference, the United States was not permitted to fortify Guam, so there were no coastal gun emplacements in 1941. As a result, the defensive capabilities were wholly inadequate to defend the island.
This fact was painfully obvious to the Governor of Guam, Navy Captain George J. McMillin, who was responsible for civil and military administration but not tactical command of Navy and Marine forces. CAPT McMillin realized that the island could not be successfully defended against a determined Japanese invasion. To avoid unnecessary loss of lives, he planned to surrender the island quickly with minimal resistance should the Japanese land. As the island’s chief executive, he had direct authority over the Marine Insular Patrol whose force of 28 Marines supported by Navy corpsmen performed police duties at Agana and around the island. The Insular Patrol of 30 enlisted U.S. Marines armed only with pistols was commanded by McMillin’s military aide, Captain Charles S. Todd, USMC. Its day-to-day operations were directed by the assistant chief of the Insular Patrol, Sgt Shane. Marines and corpsmen were assigned to posts around the island with native members of the Patrol. The remaining Marines were at the Guard barracks in Agana. There they would play a key role, along with the Navy administered Guam Insular Force Guard and other Marines and Sailors in the fight against the Japanese in the Plaza de Espana.
The U.S. Naval force consisted of 20 Naval officers, six warrant officers and 220 enlisted Sailors. The force operated from a small Piti Naval Yard in Apra Harbor, the old minesweeper USS Penguin (AM-33) with four officers and 75 enlisted men; two old yard patrol craft, each with a five-man crew; and a small disabled oiler, USS Robert L. Barnes (AG-27), used for training mainly Chamorro messmen for duty with the U.S. fleet. In addition, there were naval staff at the governor’s office and a wireless naval communications facility, Radio Agana, with 22 Sailors not far from the Plaza in Agana. There was also a smaller naval wireless station 2 miles from Agana called Radio Libugan, a facility staffed with eight enlisted Sailors and used for finding the Japanese fleet. There was a naval hospital in Agana with a staff who provided medical care to military personnel and local populace.
The Navy-administered Guam Insular Force of 222 native Guardsmen, including bandsmen and hospital medical orderlies, were housed in Agana. They were organized and led by their training officer, Chief Boatswain Mate Robert B. Lane, and under the overall command of Commander Donald T. Giles, the governor’s civil aide and second in command. This small force protected the Piti Naval Base and Government House while patrolling around the island. They wore Navy uniforms and had Navy ranks. Their armament included three .30-caliber machine guns, four Thompson submachine guns, six Browning automatic pistols, 50 .30-cal. pistols, a dozen .22-cal. rifles, and 85 Springfield ’03 rifles marked “For Training Only. Do Not Fire.” As there were not enough weapons, some Guardsmen were not armed. The force had been expanded only a few months earlier, lacked training in the use of their weapons and had never fired their machine guns.
The island’s Marine Barracks detachment of six officers and 118 enlisted Marines (less 31 assigned to the Marine Insular Patrol) were quartered in a two-story barracks at Sumay on the Orote Peninsula, located on a bluff overlooking Apra Harbor. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William Kirk MacNulty, USMC, they were armed with M1903 Springfield rifles and 10 Lewis machine guns. Though the Marine detachment was the principal ground defense force, they had no mortars, artillery or antiaircraft guns.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, there was no effort to dig entrenchments, roadblocks or beach defenses. The only entrenchments were the rifle range butts on the Orote Peninsula overlooking Apra Harbor. With war looming, all military and civilian dependents were evacuated in October. The Marine Sumay detachment’s pre-war activities, aside from occasional rifle range practice, were performing weekly parades and close order marching and providing music and transport for the Naval staff. Duties usually ended at noon. No tactical training or maneuvers were conducted. After duty hours, many Marines hung out at Ben’s Bar in nearby Sumay town where beer was 10 cents. The bar was operated by a Japanese man whom everyone called Ben Cook (who turned out to be a Japanese Naval officer working as a spy). As one detachment Marine commented in Roger Mansell’s book “Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam,” pre-war Guam was “truly a paradise.”
A Pan American Sikorsky-S-42 Clipper landing in Sumay, Guam, prior to World War II. The Marine detachment stationed in Sumay regarded pre-war Guam as a paradise. Courtesy of National Park Service.
As tensions with Japan rose with war warnings came from Washington, Japanese observation planes from Saipan flew over Guam daily. LtCol MacNulty met with the Pan Am Station Manager, Charles Gregg, during the last week of November and informed him that a Japanese attack was imminent and, if it happened, his Marine force would be in command of all government personnel with plans to evacuate American civilians. The Marines began improving defenses at their rifle range. They were issued ammunition and kept their weapons and ammo under their beds. The command was making plans to cache a week’s worth of food at select remote locations to enable personnel to hold out for rescue by the Navy.
When the invasion did occur, there was no time for MacNulty to coordinate defensive actions. While the Americans still hoped that ongoing negotiations with Japan in Washington would forestall war, on Dec. 6, Governor McMillin ordered the destruction of all classified documents on the island to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands.
While this was happening, the Japanese were making final preparations for the invasion of Guam. The principle invasion unit was the South Seas Detachment under Major General Tomitaro Horii. It included the 144th Infantry Regiment and other units from the 55th Division, with a total of 4,886 men who were aboard ships in the Bonin Islands. They would be accompanied by a supporting force, the 370-man strong 5th Company (also called the 5th Special Force) of the 2nd Maizuru Special Naval Landing Force, commanded from Saipan by Naval Captain Hiromi Hayashi.
The two forces would be transported to Guam on nine transports escorted by the Japanese Fourth Fleet’s heavy cruiser Aoba, destroyers Yuzuki, Kihuzuki, Uzuki and Oboro, four gunboats, five subchasers, a minesweeper squadron and other auxiliaries, with air support from the 18th Naval Air Corps at Saipan. This oversized landing force was being employed because the Japanese believed (strangely because of their careful surveillance of the island) that there were 300 Marines and 1,500 armed native defenders on Guam. Major General Horii assumed that the main resistance would be by the Marine detachment on the Orote Peninsula.
For Guam, the war commenced at 5:27 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, (Dec.7 at Pearl Harbor across the International Dateline) when the Navy Communications Office at Agana received a teletype message from Admiral Thomas C. Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet tersely stating “Japan Started Hostilities. Govern yourself accordingly.” Guam was also notified of the Pearl Harbor attack. The radio operator immediately notified McMillin and MacNulty. There was an immediate attempt by radio to alert the minesweeper USS Penguin, which was on patrol around the island, but the ship’s radio was not being monitored at that time. McMillin notified Commander Donald T. Giles, who was responsible for the Insular Guard, and his military aide, Capt Todd, that Pearl Harbor was being attacked. Various posts were notified by phone until Japanese saboteurs or bombs cut the phone lines about 7:30 a.m., which caused the use of runners. Todd was directed to have his Insular Guard Force arrest all Japanese who were quickly rounded up and put in the Agana jail. The governor also ordered the residents of Agana, Agat and other towns to evacuate and most fled into the jungle and mountains.
USS Penguin tied up at its buoy about 8 a.m. where a launch arrived with a message informing the captain, Lieutenant J.W. Haviland, of the Pearl Harbor attack. At 8:27 a.m., 18 Japanese seaplane bombers and fighters attacked various points including the Libugan radio station, without effect, and Agana, Sumay and USS Penguin. Three Japanese fighters made two passes at Penguin, whose crew tried to fight back with their antiaircraft gun. One Japanese plane was hit but not observed to go down. The gun crew commander, Ensign White, was killed by strafing. Three bombs exploded close to the ship, inflicting leaks in the hull. Three crewmen, including Haviland, were injured. Haviland ordered the ship to be scuttled and the seacocks were opened while the crew boarded a life raft or swam to shore. The Pan Am hotel was also attacked and destroyed, with loss of civilian life.
Sailors aboard USS Penguin (AM-33) set up a defensive position in Apra Harbor to push back approaching Japanese forces. USN.
For Marines at Sumay, the day began with the usual early reveille followed by breakfast. Many Marines were still in the barracks when the Japanese bombed the barracks at 7:27 a.m., even though MacNulty had been alerted before 6 a.m. Some Marines ran out in skivvies and began firing their rifles at the low flying planes. Three Marines were seriously wounded while running across the golf course to seek protection in nearby thickets. A bomb exploding 10 feet from the barracks’ radio shack mortally wounded Corporal Harry E. Anderson, who died at the hospital a few days later.
That afternoon, the Japanese also bombed several coastal villages, some of which would be landing points for the Japanese. Until about 5 p.m., more bombs were dropped around Agana but only one building was destroyed. Their bombing of Agana was opposed by antiaircraft fire from a machine gun that lacked a tripod and was manually mounted on a ledge atop the old Spanish fort above Agana. Manned by Marine Private First Class Knute Hanson, he was certain that he downed at least one Japanese aircraft.
That evening McMillin conferred with his officers and informed them that he had obtained permission from Admiral Hart to give up the island without resistance when the Japanese landed. MacNulty disagreed and insisted that his Marines would not surrender without a fight. It was agreed that only a token resistance would be offered, and that the Marine detachment would defend the Orote Peninsula and the approaches to Sumay and Apra Harbor. The Guam Insular Guard and Insular Patrol along with Sailors from Penguin and from the Government House would be concentrated at the Plaza in Agana where they would set up defenses. Preparations would be made to destroy equipment to prevent it from falling into Japanese hands. The Guam Insular Guard was recalled to the Plaza at Agana and Todd was instructed to recall the remote Insular Patrol Marines and native Guardsmen, but he disregarded the instructions. He and Sgt Shane drove to the outposts but only instructed the native Patrol members to assemble at Agana. According to author Tony Palomo’s “An Island in Agony,” Shane disagreed with the decision, feeling that the Marines at those posts would have a better chance at the Plaza. However, events proved Todd was correct.
During the night, CAPT McMillin received a report that the Guam Insular Patrol had apprehended three men who had landed in a dugout canoe during the night near Ritidian Point at the northern end of the island. They were brought to the government house for questioning by McMillin and his staff. Local Chamorros identified the men as Chamorros who were native to Saipan but had relatives on Guam. The men stated that they were sent to be interpreters for the Japanese landing force which would land the next morning at Dungcas Beach, about a mile up the shore from Agana. When asked by McMillin why they were offering this information, they said that on Saipan the Chamorros were treated like slaves by the Japanese. They apparently believed what they said even though the invasion did not actually start until the day after. Both McMillin and MacNulty were skeptical and thought the infiltrators were trying to draw the Marines away from the Orote Peninsula. No effort was made to set up defenses at Dungcas beach.
A view of the Government House (above) across from the Plaza de Espana in Guam. In the days before the war, a Navy ceremony is held (next image) near the Governor’s Palace on Guam. (Photos courtesy of National Park Service)
Bombing resumed at 8:30 a.m. the following day against the same targets, along with the Government House in Agana and some scattered air attacks at villages around the island. The Marine barracks was damaged along with the Pan Am Air installation and the Standard Oil tanks, which had already been hit and set afire the previous day. Marines from the barracks were deployed in the rifle range butts. Machine-gun and rifle fire was directed against the Japanese planes from Orote and Agana, but no hits were observed.
That evening, the Japanese invasion fleet departed the island of Rota for Guam. Because General Horii assumed there could be almost 2,000 armed defenders, possibly with heavy weapons, his plan divided the landing force into three components. The Hayashi Naval 5th Special Unit with an Army reinforced battalion called the Tsukomoto Force would land at Tumon Bay about 4 miles northeast of Agana, then move quickly down the coast road to capture Agana. The Hayashi Force would then move to secure the installations at Apra Harbor. The main force with two thirds of the reinforced 144th Regiment, called the Kusunose Force, would land at a beach on the southwest coast near Merizo and advance north to overcome any resistance at Orote and meet up with the northern force. A smaller detachment from the main force would land in the east at Talofofo Bay and move inland to protect the heights above Apra.
About 1 a.m. on Dec. 10, on the orders of McMillin, the small force of defenders began setting up their defenses in the Plaza. Sgt Shane and the 11 Marines of the Insular Patrol prepared defensive positions with sandbags, ditches and overturned benches in front of the Government House on the southwest side of the Plaza. Lane led the three platoons of Insular Guards, about 80 men with a few Penguin Sailors, who were deployed with little cover around the Plaza. A machine gun was assigned to each platoon. One, under Guardsman Pete Cruz, was positioned without cover at the critical northeastern corner near the cathedral to cover the narrow street to the north. He was assisted by Guardsman Vincente Chargualaf to whom Cruz handed his pistol to provide cover when he changed ammunition belts. They were unexpectedly joined by an 8-year-old boy, Ramon Camacho, who emerged from the cathedral intending to take photos. Cruz tried to warn the boy away but he stayed and assisted Cruz in changing the ammo belt while Chargualaf covered them with a pistol. Across the Plaza at the northwestern corner in front of Dorn Hall, Guardsman San Nicholas with two men set up their gun to cover the Agana jail and elementary school on the north side. The third machine gun under Guardsman Joe Perez and crew was set up to cover the southeastern corner and area south of the cathedral. The Guardsman and Sailors with rifles were deployed around the Plaza using the cover of hedges where possible.
The Japanese landing plans went slightly astray but did not affect the ultimate outcome. The transports began readying their landing barges for debarkation at 1 a.m. on Dec. 10. In the south, the main Kusunose Force landed at Merizo but split into two parts because there were no direct roads. This significantly delayed their move toward Sumay and the Orote Peninsula. The northern Tsukamoto Force found its way through the coral reefs and landed at Tumon Bay at 2:25 a.m. as planned. These troops almost immediately encountered and fired up a jitney carrying a Chamorro family, killing most of them. They also captured two Sailors from Penguin.
The Hayashi Special Naval Landing Force, which debarked from a different transport, could not find the reef opening, so it moved southward around the steep cliffs at Oca Point where they found a channel into Agana Bay. Firing flares to guide the landing craft, they landed about 3:30 a.m. on Dungcas Beach less than 2 miles from the Plaza in Agana. As the boats approached shore, the splashing was overheard by Insular Guardsman Juan Perez on beach patrol. He fired at the first boat then ran to Agana to warn Governor McMillin. The landing force encountered six Sailors from the USS Penguin. After a short exchange of fire, the Americans surrendered and were then wired together and killed by bayonets. Farther north at Tumon Bay, the Army Tsukamoto Force was delayed by waiting for the Hayashi Force, unaware they had landed 2 miles farther down. This delay prevented them from reinforcing the Hayashi force.
Around 4 a.m., McMillin received a report of flares at Dungcas Beach. Assuming a Japanese landing was underway, he issued orders to all stations to carry out their assigned missions. A Penguin Sailor patrolling the San Antonio District between the Plaza and the beach reported a large landing force to Lane at the Plaza. Japanese troops entering that district began sweeping the streets with gunfire.
That shooting was heard at the Plaza, and some fires were seen. The Marines, Sailors and Insular Guard were in their defense positions around the Plaza, which was ringed with buildings, including a Catholic church, Guard barracks, public works, police station and Government House. This limited the Japanese approach to mainly a narrow street from the north and streets from the northwest and south. There was little protection, mainly hedges in some spots. Their three machine guns were set up to cover two intersections by the church, the road from Agana Heights and an intersection by the police station. There were fewer than 100 defenders. Marine defenders in the Plaza included Sgt Shane and PFCs Harris Chuck, Robert Hinkle, Frank Nichols, William Bomar, Hal Burt and John Kaufman from the Sumay barracks. Kaufman had joined earlier from the hospital and apparently fought alongside the Guards and Penguin sailors. Insular Patrol PFC’s Richard Ballinger and Garth Dunn guarded the rear entrance to the Government House.
In the days before the war, a Navy ceremony is held near the Governor’s Palace on Guam. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service)
As the defenders nervously awaited the Japanese who were infiltrating the streets toward the Plaza, Shane ordered PFC Chuck to take a few Marines to the garage and armory and destroy everything. Accompanied by PFCs Bomar and Burt, he commandeered a van and drove to the garage where the three disabled the vehicles with hammers and then broke the lock to the armory and set it afire with gasoline.
Hayashi’s men moved rapidly approaching the Plaza on a narrow street from the north alongside the hospital and a cathedral and also from the northwest. Some of his force were moving to circle around the Plaza to approach from the northwest and cut off retreat to the south. About 5:15 a.m., the Japanese crammed in the narrow street by the cathedral and marched almost shoulder to shoulder with their bayoneted rifles facing forward into the plaza. Guardsman Juan Perez opened fire with his Browning Automatic Rifle on a soldier crossing the Plaza, causing others to run for cover. Guardsman Pedro Cruz, manning the machine gun at the northeastern corner near the cathedral, saw Japanese begin sneaking into the plaza from the north and opened fire. As the Japanese entered the Plaza in force, the defenders opened fire on the advancing Japanese front ranks, killing and wounding many. The Marines defending Government House joined the firing. The intense fusillade caused the Japanese to fall back, reform and then advance again. The defenders continued heavy fire, causing the attackers to withdraw a second time. Reforming again, the Japanese advanced from the north and northwest, swarming into the Plaza with fastened bayonets and leveling heavy fire at the defenders. They also rolled in a pack howitzer.
The firing remained intense as the defenders fell back. At the northeast corner of the Plaza covering the cathedral approach, Pedro Cruz continued firing his Lewis gun, with the boy helping change belts, until Japanese return fire killed both Roman Camacho and Vicente Chargualaf. Cruz withdrew and was soon captured. At the northwestern corner, the Lewis gun operated by Guardsman San Nicholas and his two-man crew fired on the Japanese. After some exchange of fire, they dropped the gun and fled under Dorn Hall to escape but were met by a large group of Japanese soldiers between Dorn Hall and the Guard barracks where Nicholas escaped up a cliff behind the Government House but his loader, Angel Flores, was shot and killed.
Todd issued orders to the surviving defenders to withdraw to the protection of the thick-walled Insular Guard barracks on the western side. The Insular Patrol Marines and some defenders ran to that shelter including Radioman Second Class Robert Epperson, who fired his pistol at the attackers until his ammunition was expended. Penguin sailor Electricians Mate First Class Ralph Gwinnup was shot in the ankles and dragged by his comrades to the barracks. Other Japanese began to flank from the south side of the Plaza.
With the Japanese overrunning the Plaza and the surviving defenders in retreat, Governor McMillin, who had by then received telephone reports of other Japanese landings, realized that resistance was futile. Deciding to surrender, he telephoned MacNulty to not resist. About 5:45 a.m., to prevent an imminent slaughter, Giles crawled out in front of Government House and ran to a nearby Chevrolet and sounded three horn blasts. He believed they would understand and cease firing, which they did as did the Japanese. However, there was immediately some brief gunfire behind Government House. There is some dispute as to the reason but most likely was because Chief Petty Officer Malvern Smoot and a civilian, John Klugel, came from behind Government House in effort to escape.
Today, Guam is a strategic Pacific outpost for U.S. military forces, containing a Marine Corps Base and joint Navy-Air Force Base. Cpl Hailey D. Clay, USMC.
Smoot fired his pistol and hit several Japanese before he and Klugel were killed in a hail of gunfire. Two sailors from Government House, Joseph Blaha and Lyle Eads, exited and tried to join the defenders but were wounded and initially presumed dead by the Japanese. To be sure, they bayoneted Blaha and started to bayonet Eads, but he rose and raised his hands. Both were taken to the hospital and survived. PFCs Bomar and Burt, who had ridden with PFC Chuck to sabotage the armory and motor pool, jumped out of his van on the return trip to try to escape. They were soon captured by a Japanese patrol and executed, by some accounts by beheading. In words of McMillin in his later formal report, “The Insular Force Guard stood their ground, and opened up a fire with machine guns and rifles hot enough to halt the invading force for a short time. The situation was simply hopeless, resistance had been carried to the limit.”
As a tense quiet prevailed over the Plaza, a Japanese near the cathedral, using a bullhorn, called out in broken English, “You are surrounded. You must surrender. Send your Captain!” At the direction of the governor, Giles and Lane stepped out and crossed the Plaza unharmed to parlay. They were marched through the San Antonio district to make contact with the Commander of the Naval landing force, Hayashi, and returned about a half hour later with the Japanese commander. The remaining defenders in the Plaza put down their weapons and began to rise and raise their arms, the pre-dawn darkness masking their fears of harm and execution. Before the Japanese commander arrived, a squad of Japanese soldiers entered the governor’s quarters and took McMillin captive. He was made to remove his jacket and trousers then marched to the Plaza where the Japanese were assembling their prisoners in three ranks, covered by machine guns. Prisoners were prodded by bayonets and savagely beaten into line. Those who had taken refuge in the barracks were ordered by a Japanese officer to come out and surrender. The prisoners were ordered to remove their clothing. PFC John Kaufman was not removing his underwear fast enough; the enemy slashed open his abdomen and he fell over and died.
Hayashi, McMillin and Commander Giles entered the Government House escorted by a Japanese guard with rifles and fixed bayonets. Because none of the Japanese with Hayashi spoke English, a local Japanese civilian, Mr. Shinahara, was brought to act as the interpreter. McMillin indicated that he was prepared to sign a declaration of surrender if the Japanese agreed to respect the civil rights of the people of Guam and that the surrendered military would be accorded the rights under international law. Hayashi agreed and surrender terms were drafted and signed by McMillin about 7 a.m. on Dec. 10. The Japanese laid out an American flag in the Plaza and shined flashlights on it to signal the surrender to their planes overhead.
By now, dawn was breaking and the surrendered defenders in the Plaza could see bodies of Japanese and some defenders strewn around the Plaza. The Marines had lost three killed, all after being captured or surrendered. Fortunately, none of Shane’s Marines defending Government House were killed in the actual fighting. The Navy had lost two and the Insular Guard had lost three plus the civilian volunteer, Roman Camacho. Despite the surrender agreement, the fate of the prisoners remained uncertain. More than once, they were stood up as if facing a machine-gun firing squad then told to sit down. Chief Petty Officer Robert O’Brien from Penguin, who could speak Japanese, overheard Hayashi say that he wanted to execute the prisoners because they had killed more than 200 of his men but was overruled by his Fleet commander. A formal count of Japanese losses was not reported but the island’s mortician, Pharmacists Mate First Class John Ploke recorded in his diary that he later counted more than 200 dead Japanese. Other sources reported that only one Japanese sailor was killed and six wounded which seems unlikely given the fusillade that met the Japanese advance into the Plaza. At the same time, more than 200 Japanese dead appears high as it would have been half the 400 men from the Landing Force and there were still swarms of Japanese in and around the Plaza after the surrender.
After a time, the prisoners’ clothes were returned. The American officers were taken and held in the Navy hospital. The other Plaza prisoners, along with those in Agana who had surrendered were rounded up and sent to the cathedral. The wounded were taken to the hospital for treatment.
Lieutenant Governor of Guam, Joshua Franquez Tenorio, gives welcoming remarks at the Hasso Inalåhan memorial in Inalåhan, Guam, July 13, 2022, in remembrance of the 1941 invasion of the island. After the invasion, thousands of Guamanians were forced into prison camps until they were liberated by U.S. forces in 1944. LCpl Garrett Gillespie, USMC.
At the Sumay barracks that morning, the Marines were advised by the executive officer, Major Donald Spicer, to take cover in the surrounding jungle and not congregate at the rifle range butts west of the barracks. This is according to a Pan Am manager, James Thomas, who was in direct contact with MacNulty. MacNulty realized that surrender was imminent and that with daylight, Japanese aircraft would be swarming overhead with the Orote Peninsula a prime target. Congregating the Marines would attract the attention of strafing aircraft and result in unnecessary loss of life. Many Marines scattered into the nearby jungle for cover while some remained at the barracks. A roadblock ordered by MacNulty was never fully implemented.
Having secured the Plaza and ended resistance, Hayashi formed a detachment of his men and march directly over a paved road to secure the Piti Navy Yard. He then began marching to Sumay. Shortly after leaving Piti, his force encountered a few Marines of the Insular Patrol who were unaware of the surrender and opened fire. The Japanese quickly surrounded and disarmed the Marines without any injuries to either side. Hayashi’s detachment then marched quickly to the neck of the Orote Peninsula where they were supposed to join and support an attack by General Horii’s main force.
At the barracks, MacNulty had been informed by McMillin of the surrender agreement directed not to resist. The Marines were called back from the surrounding area and assembled. A Marine bugler sounded retreat and the American flag was lowered amidst many tears. Hayashi proceeded to the barracks where he accepted the surrender of the Marines from MacNulty. The Marines were initially stripped naked and made to sit on the adjoining golf course and then later taken to the cathedral where Japanese soldiers from Tumon Bay had taken over guard duty. The Marines around the island were alerted and came in or were captured by Japanese patrols unharmed. Over the next few days, the Sailors and Marines who tried to hide in the jungles and mountains turned themselves in or were captured by roaming patrols. Six Sailors from the Agana radio station remained at large hoping for rescue by a Navy task force and hidden for a time by loyal Chamorros.
The battle for Guam, though brief, was over. The Marines had four killed and 12 wounded from the bombing and Plaza battle. The Navy had lost nine and 25 wounded while the Guam Insular Force lost four including the civilian volunteer and five wounded. On Jan. 10, 1942, the prisoners were loaded aboard ships bound to Japan where they were imprisoned. Back on Guam, the Japanese were determined to find the missing Americans issuing warnings that if they did not turn themselves in, they would be executed when captured. Five were eventually caught and executed. One Sailor, Radioman First Class George Tweed, was hidden and moved around by loyal Chamorros, evading constant Japanese patrols. In June 1944, he was rescued by the destroyer USS McCall (DD-400) just prior to the Marine landings on Guam. The Hayashi detachment stayed on Guam and was wiped out by Marines during its recapture.
Today, the people of Guam are U.S. citizens who require and deserve American protection. World War II showed that the Chamorro people are loyal, brave and would courageously support defense of their island. There also may be lessons we derive from the 1941 fall of Guam. Guam is an important strategic U.S. possession in the western Pacific with a large Air Force base and major naval base. Air superiority is crucial as Guam still lacks any substantial ground force defense capability and would require rapid reinforcement if threatened or attacked. Guam is key to our western Pacific defense strategy and a likely defense mission for Marine Forces Pacific to ensure 1941 is not repeated.
Author’s bio: Maj Stewart is a 1973 graduate of the Naval Academy. He also has a master’s in national security studies from Georgetown University. He served in the Marine Corps as a signals intelligence, electronic warfare and communications officer. After retiring from the Marine Corps, he pursued a 30-year career in cybersecurity as a Director, Chief Technical Officer, Corporate Chief Information Security Officer and Subject Matter Expert Consultant to Federal agencies and large corporations. He has written several articles for military journals and is a past recipient of Marine Corps Gazette’s Major General Harold W. Chase Essay Award. He is the author of the award-winning book, “Sunrise at Abadan: The 1941 British and Soviet Invasion of Iran.”
In November 1943, 21-year-old Private First Class Lupe Gasca waded slowly through chest-deep water, toward the small strip of coral clouded by dark gray smoke. Japanese bullets smacked the water to his left and right as he picked his way toward the only structure that looked as though it might offer some protection—a pier jutting out into the lagoon.
Eighty years later, the memories of that afternoon and the rest of his time at Tarawa remain fresh. His eyes fix on a scene that he still sees clearly in his mind. “I remembered two things I forgot to mention last time we talked,” Gasca said one afternoon in his Minnesota living room. “The heat, and the smell. The smell of death … I can still smell it right now. I’ll never forget that.” Now 101 years old, Gasca is one of the very last who remembers the battle for Tarawa.
Gasca joined the Marine Corps in 1942 from Albert Lea, Minn. The son of tenant farmers, Gasca’s young life was characterized by manual labor on farms during the Great Depression. He went to school on a part-time basis but frequented the local library and was especially enthralled by its collection of images of the First World War.
In the summer of 1934, Gasca had a chance encounter that would change the course of his life. While shocking wheat for a farmer, the farmer’s son returned home on leave from the Marine Corps. “He was wearing the khaki shirt with the blue trousers with the red stripe, and the white cap. And he sat and talked to us.” Gasca recalled. The Marine was serving on guard duty in Washington, D.C., and showed Gasca and the other children photos of himself in his dress blue uniform. Gasca had also seen photos of trench warfare in the library’s collection. “I had seen these guys fighting in the mud and everything. So, when World War II broke out and they started talking about recruiting, I said ‘well, I’m not going to join the Army, I’m going to go in the Marine Corps, because I’ll get the easy job. I’m not going to be crawling in the mud like those other guys.’ ” Gasca did join the Marines, and after completing his training, was assigned to 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, refitting in Wellington, New Zealand.
Marines cross the seawall, moving in from the beach. Shortly after arriving for duty with B/1/2 in Wellington, New Zealand, Lupe Gasca boarded a landing craft to support the beach landing on Tarawa. Courtesy of National Archives.
In November 1943, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines moved from New Zealand to the New Hebrides to practice beach landings, and then finally into position a few miles off the coast of Betio Island. Gasca had been assigned to a machine-gun team of 1st Battalion’s Company B, under the command of Captain Maxie Williams. The 1st Bn was assigned to be the regimental reserve. Even so, at about 2 a.m. on Nov. 20, Gasca and the other Marines of B/1/2 filed into the ship’s galley for their pre-invasion breakfast. Then they geared up, and after a long wait, Gasca climbed down the cargo nets and into the landing craft idling in the water below.
“It was just pitch dark as could be,” he remembered. “I could see the shadows of the other ships, and some Higgins boats already making their circles. And just as I got down on the Higgins boat, I heard this funny whistling noise, right over the top of us. It was a shell! I’d never heard anything like that.” As dawn broke, Gasca and his fellow Marines continued their long wait offshore in their landing craft, “circling and circling,” as Gasca recalled. The plan was for the brand-new amphibious tractors, of which there were precious few, to create a shuttle service, taking waiting Marines from Higgins boats across the reef to the beach. If all went according to plan, 1/2 would follow close on the heels of the Regiment’s 2nd and 3rd Battalions. “They said, ‘they’re landing and they’re going to come back,’ and so we were waiting for that 15 minutes it was supposed to take.” Gasca said. “It was hours before I finally got there.”
As they waited, the water rough from the wakes of the other craft, Gasca heard more artillery. “The Japanese got our spot, and they were concentrating on our group” he recalled, imitating the noise of the incoming fire. “To my left—and I could almost see the shell!—their coxswain was hit and just disappeared.” Gasca watched helplessly as the Marines in that landing craft were thrown about, becoming casualties before even reaching the island. Even when the tractors finally did appear to complete the shuttle process, loading from the Higgins boat proved chaotic. In the confusion, Gasca and his gunner, Alfred Lewis, were left behind in the Higgins boat while their ammunition carriers went ashore aboard the amtracs, separating them and leaving the two gunners with all of the ammunition, in addition to the gun and tripod they were assigned to carry.
By this time it was about noon, and the lieutenant in his boat ordered the coxswain to take the Marines ashore instead of waiting for another amtrac. “The guy took off and went, but pretty soon, the thing hit coral. And then, the ramp went down. We were still about 200, maybe 300 yards from the beach. And we were very lucky that when the ramp went down and we started walking, the water was only up to here.” Gasca remembered, drawing a line with his hand in the middle of his chest. “There were no holes. But what happened to some other people [and] tanks completely even—the ramp went down, and the unit went down. The Sailors dropping us off were just as green as we were, they didn’t know.” With their feet on solid coral, Gasca and Lewis began their long trek to shore. “When we got so far, Lewis and I looked at each other, and we headed for the pier.” The pier, a pre-war construction extending 1,000 yards into the lagoon to allow for commercial shipping, divided Red Beach 3 from Red Beach 2, and was neutralized in the morning by a scout sniper platoon under the command of First Lieutenant William Deane Hawkins, one of Tarawa’s Medal of Honor recipients. It offered slight protection for Marines on their harrowing journey ashore.
“We were walking, and we finally got along the pier. And every so often, they would spot us. But then they’d stop again, and they’d concentrate where there were a lot of guys coming in. So, we kept walking.” Gasca recalled. “At that time, I’m just hoping I don’t get hit. When I got off of the Higgins boat into the water, there was no reason to be scared because there was nowhere to go but forward. Lewis and I weren’t even talking, we operated just on instinct.” The two Marines picked their way along the pier, careful on the rocks made slippery with the bodies of small fish killed by the concussion of the pre-invasion bombardment. Having made it to the beach, Gasca found chaos. “Finally at the end of the pier was this coconut wall. All I could see was the wall and the sand, and in the open area a bunch of junk. You could see fire, smoke and everything, and there were maybe 150, 200 guys there,” Gasca recalled. “Who they were, I don’t know. Lewis and I didn’t know anybody. But we knew that our unit was supposed to be to the right, so we started heading that way.”
Marines had to maneuver through a beach littered with tin roofing material and other debris. USMC photo.
The two began to move along the wall, when suddenly Lewis was grabbed by an unknown Marine sergeant. “He said, ‘where the hell do you think you’re going? You can’t go over there! Look!’ and he pointed. And sure enough, there was just a layer of Marines, dead in what they call no man’s land.” Unable to locate anyone from their unit, Gasca and Lewis joined a platoon of Marines fighting from a section of Red Beach 2. “There was a bunch of debris, and I could see to the left the big bunker. I couldn’t see any of the enemy. They were underneath this debris and tin, and they could see us, and they were close,” Gasca recalled. “There must have been buildings there, because there were tin roofs on the ground, with coconut trees fallen over on top of them. It was just like being in a pile of junk. And we just kept firing at the tin.” The two Marines remained there, only about 30 feet inland, firing at an unseen enemy until night fell.
When daylight came, Gasca and Lewis continued moving towards where they believed Co B to be. Finally, at about midday, they found a Marine from their company, Wayne Barr. He told them that B Company was in a tank trap, located on Black Beach, across the narrow island. After waiting for an opportune moment to cross the gun-swept terrain, Gasca noticed four planes circling in the sky above. “Just like in the movies, the sun would hit the wings, and flash silver. And then they started coming down, they were dive bombers. And I can recall telling Lewis, ‘when the other plane comes strafing, we’re going to take off,’ and so we did. We ran across, and I jumped into the tank trap and just about landed on top of Maxie Williams.”
Machine-gunners fire on Japanese positions while fighting on Betio. USMC photo.
They were greeted by laughter from the Marines in the tank trap, who told them that as they ran, Japanese bullets were hitting the ground right behind their feet. Barr, however, was not so lucky. “As he got up and took his first step, a bullet hit him right in the neck,” Gasca recalled. “We didn’t know what had happened to him, just that he had probably gotten hit, because he never came back.”
Lupe Gasca draws a map of his path across Betio. The memories are still vivid for the 101-year-old veteran of the Battle of Tarawa. Courtesy of Kurt Barickman.
At long last having rejoined Co B, Gasca continued to fight his way across Betio. He and Lewis spent the day providing suppressing fire for riflemen attempting to capture well-camouflaged and heavily defended fighting positions. “We couldn’t see anybody. They’d just tell us to fire, to pin them down while they were trying to go around a bunker,” Gasca recalled. “In one of those instances, the only guy that was there was our squad leader, by the name of [Private First Class] Arthur Wende. He was the only one from our squad, so he was directing us. There was a crater to the left of this bunker, and Wende said, ‘we can’t do anything here. I’m going to go to that crater, you keep an eye on me and I’ll give you the signal to move the gun to the crater, to fire on the other bunker.’ And he took off and ran to the crater,” Gasca said. “Just as he gets there—I can just see him—he gets his head up above the ground. And I can see the bullet hit his forehead. He stayed like that momentarily, and then fell, and was killed. Just like that … and I think that’s the only time I didn’t see Lewis grinning looking at me. And so we didn’t budge, we didn’t go. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”
The Marines continued fighting. An hour later, the two had another close call as a Japanese grenade landed next to their gun. It exploded, bending the receiver, but leaving the two Marines remarkably unscathed. The second day of battle continued for Gasca much as the first had. Even as incremental advances were made, the enemy was largely unseen and well-fortified. Occasionally, enemy emplacements would be passed with the thought that they were neutralized, only to present active resistance again later in the day from occupants who had survived previous assaults. Night fell on the second day, with Gasca and his fellow Marines still inside the tank trap.
On the morning of the Nov. 22, the Marines in the tank trap again made plans to neutralize the bunkers in their area. Gasca provided suppressing fire, enabling the riflemen to locate the source of the Japanese returning fire and successfully neutralize the position. The tenor of the fight had changed, advances were being made. “People were more relaxed, some of them were walking around” (as opposed to crawling for fear of being hit), Gasca remembered. But the island was far from secure.
Co B continued their advance along the island’s southern shoreline. “So now, it gets dark,” Gasca recalled. “We headed towards this other bunker, but there was no activity. Nobody shot at us. And so we got there, and made our dugout for the third night.” Gasca was standing watch, with his machine gun facing the water to guard against possible infiltration from the sea. “At about 11 o’clock, I thought I saw some movement at this bunker. Now before it got dark, I hadn’t seen any door there. But pretty soon, I saw a couple of other guys moving. I had a rifle right next to my machine gun, and I picked up the rifle and I fired. And I hit him.”
Wounded Marines are evacuated from Tarawa via rubber boat. Lupe Gasca was one of the many wounded Marines transported from the atoll this way. Courtesy of National Archives.
At once, it all broke loose. “Just as I fired on top of the bunker—which was high and covered in sand and debris—about 20 guys came over the top! They were firing at us, and I spun my machine gun around and opened up. I didn’t even fire a belt, I probably only fired about 15 seconds. All the other guys opened up with rifles and BARs and everything,” he recalled. “And about the same time that I was doing this, a hand grenade landed to my left and killed some of the guys, and that’s when I got hit. I felt warm from my legs, and tried to move, and I fell down. So that’s when I got wounded. I’ll never forget that.”
Corpsmen treat wounded Marines during the Battle of Tarawa. Lupe Gasca can’t forget the sight of so many Marines lying on the beach. USMC photo.A clipping from a local newspaper announces Lupe Gasca’s wounding at Tarawa. (Courtesy of Kurt Barickman)Marines are loaded onto a troopship using a wire basket. Lupe Gasca was evacuated with others and treated for the shrapnel wounds in his leg before returning to fight in later battles in the Pacific. Courtesy of National Archives.
Gasca was taken to an aid station back by the tank trap, where he was patched up by corpsmen. The next morning, he was evacuated. “A jeep came over with a stretcher to take us, and they brought me back towards the beach, almost where I came in,” he recalled. “And the Higgins boats still couldn’t come in because there wasn’t enough water. So they put me on a rubber boat and took me out to where it was deep enough for the Higgins boat.” From there, the Higgins boat transported Gasca to the waiting ship. “The winch came down from the ship, and the guys in the landing craft put me in the wire basket. And I was just thinking ‘gee, I hope these baskets don’t drop.’ It happened, you know, and you would sink.” Gasca made it aboard without incident and began his nine-day voyage back to Hawaii. Arriving at the hospital in Pearl Harbor, Gasca was greeted with a pleasant surprise. “The day I arrived in the hospital, I got into the [ward], and there he was, Barr! He was already walking, with a bandage around his neck. The bullet had gone through his neck, but he survived.”
Lupe Gasca, center, stands with other Tarawa veterans Tom Glynn, left, and Bud Benoit. Gasca maintained active memberships with multiple reunion organizations through the years. Courtesy of Kurt Barickman.
Gasca underwent procedures to remove the shrapnel from his legs—without anesthesia—and slowly regained the ability to walk. He recovered in time to rejoin B/1/2 and fought with them for the rest of the war, surviving the campaigns on Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. As a part of the occupation forces, he witnessed firsthand the devastation in Nagasaki. Finally, in late 1945, he returned home to Minnesota.
The Battle of Tarawa remains a defining moment in the history of the Marine Corps. The brutality of the battle shocked the American public, and the images produced caused scandal. Nearly 3,500 casualties in just 76 hours was a bitter pill to swallow. Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II, said the battle, “knocked down the front door to Japanese defenses in the Central Pacific,” and influenced American doctrine in amphibious operations to come. Eighty years on, remnants of the battle are abundant on Betio, and efforts continue to recover the remains of Marines still buried in lost graves on the atoll, PFC Arthur Wende among them.
To Gasca, the legacy of his involvement doesn’t seem to loom large. “It’s a long time ago, and you know, over the years I never talked about it. I came home and got married and raised a family, and we never talked about it. In fact, even when I got back to B Company right after the battle, we never talked about it,” Gasca said. “But after so many years, I wondered—why did they do it like that?”
Eight decades later, Gasca is one of only a few left who fought on Tarawa. He doesn’t see himself as a hero. “I just went and joined the Marine Corps because I didn’t want to join the Army,” he laughed. “But later on, I was proud.”
Editor’s note: Special thanks to Kurt Barickman for his assistance with this article.
Author’s bio: Patrick Reed is a historian and graduate of Abilene Christian University. He has a particular interest in the Marine Corps and Marine Corps history, and travels to speak with World War II veterans about their experiences.
Noncommissioned officers (NCOs) perform one of the most critical functions of the Marine Corps. They serve as the first line of leadership in every small unit and can make or break the officers over them. In combat, the significance of their role expands greatly as they make decisions with immediate impact on the lives of their Marines.
Active-duty personnel and civilians on Marine bases around the world dedicate their full-time efforts to the professional military education (PME) of up-and-coming NCOs. In Quantico, Va., the College of Enlisted Military Education enjoys the benefits of their proximity to the National Museum of the Marine Corps and all the resources it can offer.
One of the most important resources comes from the experience of docents who volunteer their time to help preserve the history on display and educate the public. Ronald Echols has served as a docent since 2008. He left the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant in 1968 after four years of service. At first glance, his lowly rank and time in service may seem unremarkable, but for those who know him, Ron’s time on active duty proved an action-packed whirlwind of combat, leadership challenges and, ultimately, a battlefield commission. As a result, today he helps lead a portion of the PME for new sergeants during their four-week primary course.
“I try to explain to them that caring for the Marines under them is the most important thing they’ve got to do,” Ron said. “It’s like being a parent. All of them are now in charge of somebody and they’ve got to take care of them. I have the students for about 45 minutes, and it always makes me feel good to feel like I’m giving something to these young Marines.”
Baptism by Fire
Ron joined the Marines in 1964 at the age of 18. He received selection for sea duty and spent two years aboard ship before joining the 2nd Marine Division rifle team at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He made sergeant in less than three years, and in June of 1967, deployed to Vietnam. Assigned to “Mike” Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, Ron endured his baptism through fire in short order. The battalion operated in the northern part of South Vietnam along the Demilitarized Zone. Through the summer, several Marine units were bloodied and nearly wiped out by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) near Con Thien. 3/26 arrived in September for their turn in the melee.
The battle opened on Sept. 7. Ron’s company witnessed their heaviest action three days later.
“We had four tanks, two Ontos, and a battalion of Marines,” Ron remembered. “Who is gonna mess with a battalion of Marines and all that armor? Well, the 324th NVA Division attacked us. Within 15 minutes, we had one Ontos left, and the tanks were blown all to crap. It was raining artillery on us. For seven and a half hours, it was on, with hand-to-hand and everything.”
At one point during the battle, Ron pushed forward with his Marines. A punch to his face temporarily stunned him before he surged ahead again.
“He’s hit!” screamed one of Ron’s Marines.
“Who’s hit?” Ron yelled.
“You’re hit!”
Ron discovered a splash of blood across his flak jacket increasing in size. He put his hand to his face and lowered it covered in red.
“Well, give me a bandage then!”
This immersive exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps allows visitors a glimpse into the world that SSgt Ron Echols and other 3/26 Marines faced during the siege at Khe Sanh. Kyle Watts.
SSgt Ron Echols, left, and one of the Mike Co Navy corpsmen on Hill 881S during the siege at Khe Sanh. (Photo courtesy of Charles McCarty) He continued fighting until the next day when he could be evacuated to the hospital ship. Doctors discovered a bullet entered his cheek near the mouth and exited the other side of his face in front of his ear. Miraculously, no bones or nerves were hit. A plastic surgeon went to work, and less than a month later, Ron returned to the front lines. He counted as one of 434 Marines from the battalion wounded in the fight around Con Thien where 55 had been killed. Due to the attrition his company suffered, Ron was appointed the platoon sergeant. He would hold the responsibility for his platoon for the rest of his time in Vietnam.
The remainder of 1967 proved mercifully less eventful for Company M as a whole. October and November held several significant events for Ron, however. He received a second Purple Heart during one patrol when an ambush caught them with mortar rounds. Shrapnel peppered his leg, but Ron completed the mission without evacuation from the field. Later, on another patrol around a U.S. Navy Seabees gravel operation called “the rock crusher,” Ron further increased his reputation as a bold and decisive leader.
Ron volunteered one morning to take out a recon patrol of eight Marines, in place of a squad leader who typically led the daily tours around the perimeter. As they moved down a dirt road, friendly mortars suddenly exploded nearby over the crest of a distant hill. Ron grabbed the radio as the patrol found cover.
“What the hell is going on?”
“We’ve got a large group of Viet Cong in the open!” Replied a voice on the other end.
“Well, you’re almost on top of us!”
Sprinting figures appeared over the top of the nearby hill, holding AK-47s and heading directly toward Ron’s patrol. More followed behind the lead group. Even more sprinted up and over the crest behind them. Ron moved the radio back to his face.
“I see them! They’re coming over the hill right in front of me!”
“Act as a blocking force!”
Ron laid eyes on the seven other Marines of his patrol. At least five times their number of VC were already over the hill and coming on fast.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Ron asked, presuming the voice believed Ron was at the head of a company, or even a full platoon.
“Yes! Now act as a blocking force!”
Ron dropped the radio and ordered the Marines into a ditch alongside the road.
“Stay down! Nobody shoots until I do!”
The first group of enemy stopped alongside the road less than 20 yards away. They waited in the open as more VC poured over the hill. Within minutes, a group nearly 50 strong gathered by the road catching their breath.
“I swear to God, I do not know what made me do this,” Ron remembered recently. “I jumped up and shouted, ‘Stop!’ in Vietnamese and every one of them threw their hands straight up in the air. The only thing I can figure is that they had just gotten through being mortared like crazy and they thought they had run into some big unit, so they surrendered.”
The Marines led the group of prisoners to an open spot in the road and surrounded them as they lay on the ground. Ron radioed for immediate help. The closest available unit was a group of Australians.
“I don’t care who they are,” Ron advised. “We need help now!”
As seen in a view from Hill 881S, this ridgeline several hundred meters away from the Marine positions proved a source of continuous enemy fire. Accordingly, it became the target of friendly airstrikes and artillery fire. The initial plume of an explosion can be seen bursting up in the center of the photo.
A dust cloud soon formed in the distance as a convoy of Australian vehicles approached. The Aussies tucked prisoners into every nook and cranny of their trucks to transport their haul away. The Marines moved aside as the convoy sped off. As the engines faded into the distance, Ron turned to his stunned men.
“This patrol is OVER!”
They returned to base safely and found the platoon commander and company commander waiting for them inside the wire.
“Sergeant Echols,” said the captain, “You come with me.”
The officer immediately filed paperwork for Ron’s meritorious promotion to staff sergeant. Less than three weeks later, with just over three years total in the Marine Corps, Ron received his promotion to staff sergeant. After Ron’s elevation to platoon sergeant, several new lieutenants cycled through. Some were wounded, some were fired, but either way, the end result left Ron ultimately responsible. He excelled in his role as acting platoon commander to such an extent that existing and incoming officers deferred to him, and left Ron in charge of his platoon.
Mike Company veteran Charles Martin carried an 8 mm video camera during his tour in Vietnam, capturing incredible footage from Hill 881S, the Khe Sanh airstrip and various other locations. This screenshot from the video depicts a machine-gunner returning fire at NVA soldiers.
By the end of December 1967, 3/26 received orders to support the looming conflict at Khe Sanh. Ron and the Marines of Company M occupied a front-and-center role in the siege, positioned west of Khe Sanh Combat Base on Hill 881 South.
In another screenshot from the video taken by Charles Martin, SSgt Ron Echols is shown carrying his favored pump-action shotgun. This portion of the video was shot immediately after Ron saved Martin’s life by cutting down several NVA with his signature firearm. Courtesy of Charles Martin.
“That wasn’t some training evolution, that was a real firefight,” SSgt Ron Echols said recently. “If I would have known at that time he was taking a video, I’d have grabbed that camera and stuck it where the sun don’t shine!” Courtesy of Charles Martin.
Marine defenses on 881S spread across two distinct hill tops, separated by a low saddle in between. Company I, 3/26, occupied the higher hilltop. Two platoons from Mike took over the lower side. Ron arrived with his Marines and found basic defensive positions carved out of the hill by its previous occupiers. He immediately ordered his Marines to dig deeper. They placed multiple layers of concertina wire outside the trench line, designed to funnel any oncoming enemy into the Marines’ machine guns. Ron directed his platoon to complete their defensive barriers with a tall, barbed wire fence immediately outside of their trench line, preventing any approaching enemy from jumping into the trenches. The Marines spaced mines and claymores around the entire perimeter. When they ran out of claymores, Ron found an abundance of detonators remaining. He improvised by filling empty ammo cans with spent rifle brass and explosives lining one side, then connected a detonator as a homemade anti-personnel device. Ron directed his men to save their empty C-ration tins and place several small rocks inside. The lid was then bent over a strand of the perimeter wire, creating a noise-making early warning device.
“I don’t even remember who our platoon commander was, but I remember Ron” said Charles McCarty, Ron’s radioman for the duration of the siege at Khe Sanh. “He was doing everything a platoon commander would do. There was this old comic book character called, ‘Sgt Rock,’ and that’s what we used to call Ron, because he was hard as a rock.”
As days turned into weeks on the hill, the trench line surrounding Mike Company evolved from a shallow ditch to a six-foot-deep channel, lined with sandbags and bunkers dug underground. Ron insisted on underground shelters, as their position proved a favorite target of NVA artillery and rockets.
Air Force B-52 bombers routinely conducted “Arc Light” strikes around Hill 881S during the siege at Khe Sanh. The power and devastation of these attacks left the Marines on the ground in awe. DOD.
Incoming of some sort hit 881S every day. Snipers kept the hill continually under fire and observation. Another hill less than a mile away, designated 881 North, acted as a NVA stronghold and observation post. Nobody knew exactly what enemy strength 881N housed. Marines patrolling that direction suffered numerous casualties without successfully reconnoitering the hill, included a company-size movement by Company I on Jan. 20, 1968. The Marines on 881S became increasingly exhausted under the constant threat of attack.
Bombs from a friendly airstrike throw up dirt in a valley between Hill 881S and a nearby ridgeline. Bomb craters can be seen across the ridge as well, from which NVA soldiers harassed the Marines on a daily basis. Joe Darrell.
U.S. air power afforded the garrison its best chance of survival. The Marines called in air strikes on any suspected enemy position. On one occasion, a sniper harassed Mike Co for several days. Finally, Ron had enough. He grabbed a pair of binoculars and kept watch over the area where the rounds originated until, finally, incoming shots gave away the sniper’s position. He found the sniper perched high in the fork of a tree branch.
“Ron saw him and he says, ‘well, I can take care of that,’ ” remembered Charles Martin, a squad leader in Ron’s platoon. “Ron called in jet. That thing circled the tree one time and came in from the back side. The sniper was climbing down when a bomb hit the base of the tree and blew it in a million pieces.”
A ridgeline several hundred meters away from 881S proved a continual source of incoming NVA artillery and rifle fire. The ridge was close enough that individual enemy soldiers were easily seen moving around. Despite its close proximity, B-52 “Arc Light” strikes rained down continuously across the ridge.
“Have you ever seen video of an arc light?” asked Charles McCarty. “To this day, when I say the word, ‘arc light,’ I get chills.”
Marines who knew what to look for might spot contrails high in the sky, signaling the coming devastation. For those unaware, the bombs fell out of nowhere. A line of explosions suddenly plumed up at one end of the ridge and worked their way across. As the explosions continued, the sound of the falling bombs, followed by their explosions, reached the Marines in a deafening roar. Shockwaves tossed the hill beneath the Marines like an earthquake. Finally, after three B-52s emptied their bomb bays of nearly 30 tons of ordnance per aircraft, nothing but a barren landscape remained.
A CH-46 touches down at Hill 881S, delivering critical supplies and extracting wounded. The “Purple Foxes” of HMM-364 provided much of the support for Marines on the hill. Joe Darrell.
“B-52s hit that ridgeline every day,” remembered Ron. “They told me on the radio to have the men get in the bunkers, put their fingers in the air, and hold their mouths open. They hadn’t dropped one that close to friendly troops before. I cannot begin to describe the noise. The whole hill was shaking like we were on a ride at the fair or something. There were big rocks falling out of the sky and I thought someone would be killed. It was just unreal.”
USMC History Division.
In this screenshot from Charles Martin’s video, a stream of Marines can be seen rushing into the back of an aircraft still running on Khe Sanh airstrip. In the video, immediately after the plane is loaded and takes off, an artillery round strikes the runway. Courtesy of Charles Martin.
Despite the impressive show of air power, the NVA dominated the hills and jungle surrounding Khe Sanh. Hill 881S was inaccessible by land and could only be resupplied by helicopter. The NVA shot down several choppers attempting to resupply the Marines on 881S. Even so, the brave helicopter pilots, primarily from the “Purple Foxes” of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, continued coming. Eventually, a “super gaggle” of jets and attack helicopters proved necessary to strafe and bomb the surrounding jungle to cover the resupply choppers. The enemy threat, combined with daily fog and inclement weather, often prevented the Marines from obtaining the critical supplies they needed.
Harry W. Jenkins arrived at 881S as the new captain in charge of Company M, in March 1968. Jenkins, who later retired as a major general, was shocked by the conditions on the hill yet impressed by the level of morale and preparedness maintained. Dirty and bearded Marines in tattered clothing filled the trenches. He found several Marines with visibly decayed teeth.
“I asked the Marines where their toothbrushes were,” MajGen Jenkins said. “They told me they were using them to clean their rifles. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t argue. That’s just one minor example, but things like that led to emergency resupply orders for any number of things. I just couldn’t believe it. We had astronauts in space going around the moon, but we couldn’t get toothbrushes to 881 South.”
Ron rationed food and water among his platoon as critical supplies ran short. At one point, the Marines ran out of C-rations and went for nine days without food before a resupply finally made it into the hill. They spread tarps out over the ground each night, capturing the morning dew to save as drinking water. A mountain stream north of the hill tantalized the Marines. The flowing sounds carried up the slope, but an unknown number of enemy in a parallel trench line stood between Mike Company and the water.
One day, while walking the perimeter, Ron heard movement outside the line, coming up the south slope. He shouldered his shotgun and prepared to fire. At the last second, three Marines appeared through the brush carrying full canteens. After Ron scolded them for being outside the wire and almost getting themselves killed, the Marines explained that they discovered a spring in a gully down the hill, where they had filled their personal canteens. Ron informed them the following day, they would be going back down to the spring with the rest of the platoon’s canteens to draw water for everyone else.
By April, Marines on the hill grew exhausted. Lack of sleep, lack of supplies, and isolation pushed them to the brink. Continual bombardment by the NVA, without real opportunity to retaliate, created a high level of aggression. On April 14, 1968, Easter Sunday, the Marines of 3/26 got their chance to let their aggression out. The order arrived to finally oust the NVA from 881N. Ron’s platoon advanced alongside Marines from Company K, down 881S to the base of 881N. A furious bombardment preceded their attack. Direct fire from 106 mm recoilless rifles on 881S soared overhead as the Marines advanced up the hill. Ron prayed none would fall short into the advancing Marines. The fight ended quickly. Six Marines died in the effort to take the hill. More than 100 NVA bodies littered the abandoned enemy emplacements. An American flag flew over 881N long enough to signal the victory to those observing from 881S, before the Marines backed down the hill once more and choppered out to Khe Sanh Combat Base. This Easter assault marked the end of the siege for Mike Co.
The battalion received a short respite following Khe Sanh. All too quickly, though, they returned to the front lines, attacking into a place ironically called, “Happy Valley,” deep into the mountains Southwest of Da Nang during Operation Mameluke Thrust. The enemy remained determined to send Ron home in a body bag.
Cpl Charles McCarty arrived in Vietnam just days after the battle at Con Thien in September 1967. He became SSgt Ron Echols’ radioman at Khe Sanh and remained by Ron’s side in that capacity for the duration of the siege. Courtesy of Charles McCarty.
During one patrol in their new area of operation, Ron’s platoon walked through chest high elephant grass. They spotted movement in the grass and Ron called the Marines to a halt. As everyone took cover, Charles Martin moved slowly around to a hill on the other side of the suspicious area and began working his way back. Ron gave hand signals directing Martin down the hill toward the area as he crept up from the opposite direction.
Charles Martin displays his flak jacket, punctured by an enemy round, following the incident where SSgt Ron Echols saved him from three NVA soldiers. Courtesy of Charles Martin.
Throughout his time in Vietnam, Ron’s weapon of choice was a pump-action shotgun. He shouldered it now once again as he approached Martin. Three Vietnamese soldiers suddenly popped up out of the elephant grass between Ron and Martin. One took off sprinting away from the Marines. Another opened fire at Martin. Martin unloaded a few rounds before a bullet knocked him off his feet. He fell to the ground gasping for breath.
Ron squeezed hard on the shotgun’s trigger and pumped the forestock as fast as he could, instantly emptying seven shells into the grass. He rotated the gun on his shoulder and loaded more shells into the magazine tube. As he slid in a third shell, an enemy soldier appeared out of the grass with rifle raised. Ron shot him down, then continued up the hill.
“I could hear Ron running up the hill after he shot two or three more times saying, ‘Marty, don’t die on me, damn you! Don’t you die on me!’ ” Martin remembered today. “He came up there and rolled me over and slapped me and said, ‘Are you OK?’”
A quick evaluation revealed the bullet tore a hole through Martin’s flak jacket but missed his abdomen. One enemy soldier escaped, and one lay badly wounded in the leg. The Marines found the third soldier dead in the grass, ripped apart by Ron’s initial volley of shotgun blasts.
On May 29, Company M choppered into a newly cleared landing zone (LZ) in the mountains. Ron boarded one of the last CH-46s to depart with 11 Marines from his platoon.
“Once we land, ya’ll need to get the hell off here!” the crew chief screamed to Ron over the noise of the engines. “We’ve been taking heavy fire up there all day!”
The mural in the 881S exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps recreates the view from the hill with stunning accuracy. From the India Co positions on the higher side of the hill, visitors can look down to Mike Company’s side of the hill, where Ron can still point out his old bunker’s location. Kyle Watts.
As the helicopter approached the LZ, enemy bullets punched holes through the aluminum skin. Hydraulic cables across the entire roof of the interior caught fire and the bird plummeted towards the ground. Tons of small arms and mortar ammo brought in by previous flights remained staged in the LZ. The doomed chopper crashed directly into it and rolled on its side. Ammo began cooking off around the burning wreck. One Marine on the ground near the LZ was killed by flying pieces of the helicopter. Shrapnel stung across Ron’s back, but miraculously, he and all seven of his Marines survived the crash and exited the chopper before it exploded.
Active-duty Marines attend several professional military education events (PME) throughout the year at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The museum tour and PME that Ron and other docents conduct for the Sergeants Course at Quantico has expanded to include other groups of active duty or reserve Marines, and even other branches of service. Rebecca Jackson.
Well-Deserved Commission
Official recognition of Ron’s role as a platoon commander finally came through in the last month of his deployment to Vietnam. In the weeks following Khe Sanh, Capt Jenkins submitted the paperwork for Ron to receive a battlefield commission. This distinguished achievement proved exceedingly rare during the Vietnam War. Numerous outstanding NCOs were plucked from combat and sent home to attend Officer Candidates School and The Basic School as part of the Meritorious NCO Program. Others received a temporary commission that reverted at the conclusion of their deployment. An incredibly select few, however, skipped these training steps of the commissioning process, remained in combat, and retained their commission as a permanent rank. Some famous names, such as the legendary Force Recon Marine Major James Capers Jr., are included in this tally. The rest are Marines such as Ron Echols, whose names, reputations, and combat exploits are known only to the Marines with whom they served.
In June 1968, Ron was called out of the field to receive a physical. Wondering why a physical was so important to call him away from his platoon, Ron was informed a physical was necessary for his promotion. In short order, the officers over Ron removed his staff sergeant chevrons and replaced them with the gold bars of a second lieutenant. The fact that Ron’s date to leave Vietnam drew near mattered little. The promotion formally recognized the position he had held all along, through all the trying times his Marines endured.
Ron arrived back in the States the following month. Just four years earlier, he stood on the yellow footprints at Parris Island as a recruit. Now, he faced the end of his enlistment as a battlefield-commissioned officer with a combat distinguished Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. A third Purple Heart for injuries received in the helicopter crash never came through. With a lifetime of experience far greater than his age of 22 might let on, Ron elected to leave the Marine Corps. Mentally, he had had enough.
Like many Vietnam veterans, Ron dove into civilian life after leaving the military and it was years before he reconnected with the Marines he fought beside. In the early 1990s, Ron began attending 3/26 reunions, and continues to this day. As he reflected back to his time in Vietnam, Ron realized his biggest regret; through all the combat and harrowing situations he and his Marines faced, he had never found the time to recommend any of his brave men for the awards they deserved for their heroism.
In 2007, the reunion group met at the National Museum of the Marine Corps shortly after it opened the previous November. The veterans of Khe Sanh found themselves transported back in time and airlifted to their old positions in the immersive exhibit dedicated to 881S. The mural surrounding the CH-46 ramp recreated the hill with stunning accuracy, and Ron could immediately look down to Mike Company’s side of the hill and point out where his bunker had been, and where some of his comrades had died.
“There is no question that there are Marines alive today thanks the superb leadership and attention to duty displayed by Ron Echols under the most trying conditions,” said MajGen Jenkins today, who also attended the 2007 reunion. “He clearly is one of the best combat leaders I ever served with. Some of that experience is passed on today, as he is often called upon to speak to classes of NCOs and enlisted Marines in various courses at Quantico.”
A Lesson in Leadership
Ron began volunteering at the museum in 2008. He and other docents began their work with the Sergeants Course at Quantico several years ago.
“Going to the museum is not technically a part of our curriculum, but by proximity, we take advantage of the museum and take the students over there,” said Master Sergeant Christian Tetzlaff, the staff noncommissioned officer in charge of the sergeant’s course in Quantico. “The docents are always energetic to help, and they take the opportunity to tell the students about events from their experience and background. Students are pretty impacted by them. It’s real stories from real people who are from their heritage.”
The museum tour comes during the “heritage” portion of the four-week long course. The curriculum covers battlefield case studies on places like Inchon and the Pusan Perimeter from the Korean War. The trip to the museum provides students with a more tangible understanding of the events covered in the classroom. Anywhere between 30 to 70 new sergeants reap the benefits offered through museum and the docents’ class. They begin with Ron in the theater, where Ron walks them through his time on 881S, and what it looks like to work “tirelessly to ensure the safety and well-being of his men,” as is stated in his Bronze Star citation read aloud to the class. The students then proceed to other docents stationed around the museum to learn more from their experiences.
“For sergeants, this course is really about reinvigorating their core values,” said MSgt Tetzlaff. “They are still sponges, trying to figure out what the Marine Corps is really all about and if they’re staying for the long haul. They see representatives like the docents who have no real reason to keep coming to the museum and volunteering their time, other than the fact that they are proud of what they are a part of. Demonstrating that to these young Marines, they’re going to look at these guys and think, ‘they are so passionate, and so thankful for all their experiences,’ knowing that they have experienced tough times,” Tetzlaff said.
Veterans of 3/26 reunited at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in 2007. From left to right: Capt John J. Gilece, CO of Mike Co, 3/26, at Khe Sanh until he was shot by a sniper; 1stLt John T. “Tom” Esslinger, Executive Officer, then-CO of Mike Co following Gilece’s wounding; SSgt Ron Echols; MajGen Harry W. Jenkins, USMC (Ret). Courtesy of Ron Echols.
“These interactions at the museum are not little things. They are profound moments that embody our culture of, ‘once a Marine, always a Marine.’ A lot of young Marines might look at that and think it’s just a cliché, but then they see it in action and see these docents volunteering their life to serve the betterment of the Marine Corps and keep our heritage alive. There is a lot of opportunity for reflection.”
A sharp fight for a nameless ridge and a ravine led to a bloody sacrifice for the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines.
October 1942 was a bleak and terrifying month for the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal. Nearly three months of combat—exhausting patrols punctuated by ferocious pitched battles—left men weakened, wounded and riddled with tropical disease. They were short of food, short of ammunition, short of everything to the point where they dubbed the campaign “Operation Shoestring” and themselves the “First Maroon Division.” Yet, despite these hardships, they managed to hold their perimeter around an airfield whose existence was their sole reason for invading the Solomon Islands. And when they took the tallies at the end of the month, the Marines appeared to come out ahead of their Japanese adversaries.
“On the Matanikau [the Japanese garrison] appears to have lost about 500 killed by artillery fire in addition to a total of 13 tanks,” noted the D-2 (Intelligence) report. “Total enemy losses along the Matanikau during this period can be conservatively estimated at 1,200 killed. Most of these were from the 4th Infantry and the Oka Unit. On the other front, 1,200 bodies were buried after the battle. A partial count of additional bodies lying in the woods indicates total losses of 2,200 killed … . The 29th and 16th Infantry Regiments and the Kawaguchi Detachment had been annihilated.” Reconnaissance patrols led by Lieutenants William “Holly” Whyte and Harold “Ramrod” Taylor revealed disorganized and demoralized defenses west of the Matanikau. While these positions could still fight—Lt Taylor gave his life to obtain this information—evidence suggested that a concerted push might break the Japanese lines.
Augmenting this pleasantly bloody news was the anticipated arrival of the 8th Marines, fresh from garrison duty in Samoa, plus additional Navy firepower. These “riches beyond the dreams of avarice” led the Division commander, Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, to green-light a new offensive across the Matanikau River. The ultimate goal was to annihilate any remnants of the beaten Japanese regiments, capture the base at Kokumbona, and “give them a sense of futility” preventing further reinforcement of the Guadalcanal garrison. Furthermore, Vandegrift hoped to capture or destroy the artillery pieces dropping shells on Henderson Field. For this mission, he tapped the relatively rested 5th Marines; the 2nd Marines and a battalion of the Army’s 164th Infantry would follow in reserve.
Crossing the Matanikau was a daunting endeavor. Marines made repeated forays to the western bank, starting with the ill-fated Goettge Patrol in August 1942 and the aptly named “First Battle of the Matanikau.” Subsequent efforts resulted in temporary control or outright repulse. In the 1st Marine Division, it was said that a man was only a man after crossing the Matanikau three times. By this standard, the 5th Marines was one of the most mature regiments on the island.
This footbridge built across the Matanikau River was installed by Marine engineers under the cover of darkness. USMC.
Private Leonard Anthony Baumann, a 25-year-old from Queens, N.Y., was an assistant machine-gunner in Company D, 5th Marines. He knew enough about what lay beyond the river to take note of the preparations. “One heavy cruiser and four destroyers came in and sailed up beach to Kokumbona and shelled [Japanese],” he noted in a makeshift diary. “Ships went up and down six times continuously throwing shells.” The following morning, Baumann’s squad moved out of their defensive positions and down to a coconut grove “to start the push.” Lieutenant Herbert Merrillat, a Marine public relations officer, watched the flow of military might moving into position. “Long lines of men in green and trucks full of ammunition and food crowded the road west of Kukum in a steady stream,” he wrote. The assault troops learned their objectives, duties, and the designated signals for success or support. Through the pattering rain, they could hear the whump of Japanese artillery rounds falling elsewhere in the regimental area.
Rain and artillery dampened the already muffled sounds of activity along the Matanikau. Under cover of darkness, Co L, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines crossed the sandbar at the river’s mouth and set up a defensive perimeter on the western bank. A thousand yards upstream, a platoon from E/2/5 slithered to the water’s edge and boarded small boats, rowing across to establish a foothold in the jungle. Three companies of the 1st Engineer Battalion went to work deploying sections of pontoon bridges across a slow, lagoon-like stretch of the river. Previous crossings relied on the sand bar and “One Log Bridge”—sites well-known to both sides and “inadequate, in any case, for the number of men involved” in the coming operation. The engineers withdrew before dawn, having secured three footbridges across the Matanikau. A fourth, strong enough for vehicles, would be deployed if the attack went well.
U.S. Navy South Pacific Photography Interpretation Unit, with modifications by author
For 1/5, Nov. 1—All Saints’ Day, began with a 4:30 a.m. reveille and an uninspired breakfast of coffee, jam, and “slum”—C-ration hash, eaten cold from the can on the front lines. As they wrapped up their repast and shouldered their weapons, an artillery barrage—nine batteries of the 11th Marines—ripped through the air overhead. Wildcats and Warhawks winged by, strafing the ground ahead with machine guns and cannon fire. A flight of 19 B-17s droned westward to drop bombs on Kokumbona. As the last shells rumbled overhead at 6:30 a.m., the first 1/5 Marines stepped onto the sturdy pontoon bridge, tramped across, and disappeared into the foliage on the other side. Within an hour, the entire regiment, from lead scouts to command post, was west of the Matanikau with all hands heading for their assigned sectors. The Japanese, shocked or strategically silent, did not contest the crossing.
Japanese dugouts were almost undetectable for the Marines of Co A due to the brush and debris from the surrounding jungle. Cpl Ernest A. Matthews, USMC.
Major William K. Enright, two weeks into his tenure as skipper of 1/5, had a 1,500-yard front to cover en route to Kokumbona, wide enough for two companies to advance abreast. He sent Captain William Kaempfer’s Co A to the right flank along the beach—making them the rightmost Marine unit of the operation—and assigned Capt Robert Shine’s Co C to cover his left flank. Co B, under Capt Walter S. McIlhenny, constituted the battalion reserve. In keeping with standard operating procedure, each of Enright’s rifle companies had a platoon of heavy machine guns—personnel from Co D—attached for the operation. These Marines sweated and struggled under the weight of water-cooled M1917 Browning machine guns and their requisite parts: weapon, tripod, water can, and as much ammunition as they could carry. Private Vincent Tortorici recalled how, on the morning of the assault, his section leader “added about eight new men from Co C to our squad to help carry the ammunition boxes.” With close contact anticipated, combat efficiency outweighed company loyalty.
Tortorici’s section leader, Corporal Anthony Casamento, was known for solid thinking under fire. The native New Yorker, still two weeks shy of 22, had two years of service under his belt; with this experience, he could lead multiple machine guns in a billet technically above his grade. Today, Casamento had two squads led by Corporals Lewis R. Robarts and Michael E. Shaner under his command. He did not concern himself with the larger tactical picture. “The Japanese had a big gun up on a hill. We called it ‘Whistling Pete,’ and it was giving us hell,” he related. “We had a job to do.”
Although focused on the task at hand, a premonition weighed on Casamento’s mind. “Somehow, just as we cross over the bridge, something comes into my mind. It’s the funniest feeling. My time’s up, I think. Right now, today.” He confided in Shaner. “Nuts,” declared Shaner, “you wait and see. You’re too lucky.” Casamento’s section fell in with Co C and began scaling the slope of a long ridge designated Hill 78.
To the right, Co A passed the burned-out hulks of Japanese tanks and moved through what little remained of Horahi, commonly called “Matanikau Village” by Marines. It was a familiar sight to the veteran outfit. “We called it a village, but Matanikau wasn’t more than eight or a dozen native huts, each with a thatched roof and walls of palm fronds and branches woven together,” commented Ore Marion of L/3/5. “This cluster of huts sat on the landward side of a little dirt road no wider than a good-size kitchen table.”
This path, known grandly as “Government Track” or “Beach Road,” passed for a main thoroughfare on Guadalcanal’s northern coast and was heavily used by both sides during the campaign. By November, “between the trucks, the tanks, and the artillery fire that had crunched over the area, there was no longer a village of Matanikau, and there never would be again. It had been pulverized.” The way ahead looked no better, torn as it was by weeks of fighting and freshly cratered by the morning’s bombardment. Still, it was “slow going,” according to Pvt Baumann, whose squad accompanied Co A. “Seen plenty of dead Japanese on the way.”
For the time, fortune seemed to smile on the 5th Marines. The 2nd Battalion maneuvered through some complicated terrain but managed to reach their assigned section of the first objective (O-1) line right on schedule. Farther to their left, the Whaling Group—a conglomerate of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, and Colonel William J. Whaling’s hand-picked scout snipers—covered hundreds of yards of thick foliage without notable incident, positioning themselves to protect the assault and advance on the Japanese flank if needed. A handful of defenders broke cover to snipe at Co A, but the preparatory bombardment effectively neutered opposition along the beach. Private Baumann deployed his machine gun “about 1,000 yards” from the Matanikau, secured after a brief exchange of fire, then continued westward for another thousand yards. Here, the Japanese had better positions. “We were in jungle along river [probably a stream just west of Point Cruz], came across Japanese emplacements made of coral rock,” he wrote. “Natural camouflage couldn’t see them until about 5 feet from them. Little firing here, not much. Moved over across road and artillery opened fire on us. Some of the fellows were wounded here.” Nevertheless, Co A secured its position on O-1 by 10 a.m.
The Massacre
Co C was making good time along the open ground atop Hill 78 when everything fell apart. Second Lieutenant David Harold Crosby Jr., had command of the point platoon of C/1/5. The 24-year-old Pennsylvanian was one of the best-educated men in the regiment, if not the Marine Corps: in addition to a bachelor’s degree from Juniata College, Crosby had earned a master’s in sociology from USC. He had a reputation as a calm, intelligent, and considerate leader who could “dreamily contemplate upon man and woman, the sea, the sky, or on the soft fragrant night air” in one moment and accompany his platoon scouts on patrol the next. Crosby was the only son of a widowed mother and had been married for just over a year; his thoughts naturally trended toward “home and peace,” according to fellow officer Gerald Armitage. Yet Crosby was not content to send his scouts anywhere he would not go himself.
Armitage recounted the scene:
“The position of the line assigned to [Co C] extended across a stretch of grassy hills, thick matted ravines, and jungle … . Dave was—as usual—at the head of his platoon with his scouts and runners. They came down the nose of a grassy hill and started to work their way through the deep undergrowth of the flatlands below [where] a man camouflaged cannot be seen a half dozen yards away. The … Japanese, masters at concealment, had organized a defensive line in the wild, tangled undergrowth, expecting a solid line of men to advance against it into an ambush without even realizing the presence of the line. But Dave, wise to their deceits, was carefully feeling his way, with his capable scouts, to prevent such an ambush to his own men and the hundreds of men behind him.”
A Japanese sniper fired too soon; one of Crosby’s Marines returned fire and scored a killing hit. As if on signal, the Japanese line opened up with “a withering barrage of fire.” Although outnumbered and outgunned, Crosby “began to coolly direct” his scouts into a position where they could fight back but was killed as he rushed a camouflaged antitank gun. “David’s men, berserk with sorrow at the loss of the leader whom they idolized, managed in the face of that hell to drive past the spot where he was slain so that they could recover him,” wrote Lieutenant Armitage. “They immediately attacked the enemy position but could not get close enough to assault it. These boys were also killed; the only man who safely returned was the runner Dave had sent back.”
Marine mortarmen drag a “Cole cart” along a narrow trail near the Matanikau River. During the attack on Nov. 1, 1942, the Marines of Co A bombarded Japanese emplacements with mortar fire. 1stSgt Abraham Felber, USMC.
As Crosby’s men fought to extract their fallen leader, 2ndLt David Claude Cox hurried to report to Captain Shine. The operations order for the assault provided—unusually, according to historian John Zimmerman—for officers to direct artillery and mortar fire on ravines or streams suspected of harboring the enemy. Shine instructed Cox to take charge of a mortar section firing on the Japanese emplacements. Cox, a South Side graduate of the University of Chicago, sought a vantage point to spot his targets and was killed moments later. Another platoon leader, 2ndLt John Wisdom Holland, was shot through the shoulder and severely wounded but refused medical treatment while his men were under fire. Three key officers were out of action in minutes; all received Silver Star Medals for gallantry, though only Holland lived to wear his.
Corporal Casamento, meanwhile, was getting his guns into the fight. Hill 78 appeared as a bisecting ridge to the advancing Marines; Casamento sent Shaner’s squad to the left while he accompanied Robarts’ squad on the right. “We were to meet up together again when we cleared the ridge we were on, before advancing to the ridge [Hill 84] directly in front of us,” recalled Private Tortorici. “Corporal Shaner’s squad wasn’t out of sight more than five minutes when our squad came under heavy machine-gun and rifle fire.” Casamento sighted a spot for the gun, directed Robarts to deploy, and ran directly into a crossfire from two Japanese positions. The assistant gunner, Pvt Michael Ciavarelli, was severely wounded; Robarts and gunner Pvt Joseph Seymour received mortal wounds, and PFC Joseph Corriggio died instantly. Japanese mortar rounds sang down, flinging Private Tortorici 30 feet in the air. The temporary ammo carriers borrowed from Co C were all killed or wounded. An entire machine-gun squad was hors de combat—and a heavy Browning could mean the difference between survival and defeat.
PFC Joseph Corriggio. Courtesy of Tony Corriggio.
Shrapnel dug into Casamento’s leg; “it burns like anything—but I’m so excited I hardly notice it.” He flung himself down behind the Browning. “I picked up [Robarts]. He was sure hit bad all right. He’d been shot right through the stomach. I picked him up: he tried to say something to me, then he died right in my arms. His mouth suddenly began to gush blood, his eyes started to stare, without winking, and I knew he was dead.” He could hear his buddies pleading, “Help me, Tony, oh God, help me,” but crawled to the machine gun instead. “I didn’t give a goddamn. I lost my head, I guess; all my friends were shot, and I was going to take revenge. The shells were booming and kerplunking all around, the shrapnel was whistling, the Japanese were yelling, and it was a plain madhouse.” Firing all but blind, Casamento took out one of the enemy positions, but “they stitched a design of bullet holes in me.” Figuring he was as good as dead, Casamento ordered Pvt Ciavarelli to head for the rear to report the situation and get corpsmen for the wounded. “Casamento told me he was done for anyway because he was so badly wounded and he would try to hold on long enough to cover my retreat to the rear,” recalled Ciavarelli. With Tortorici’s help, the wounded messenger reached the relative safety of the lines. Casamento was left all alone.
The 5th Marines’ message center lit up at 8:40 a.m. with a simple notice: “C/1/5 receiving MG fire.” Twenty minutes later, a report noted “heavy MG and mortar fire,” followed by “hit hard from front … request help from 1st Bn.” At 9:45 a.m., a breathless runner arrived with a written note from Captain Shine: “Hit hard. Many casualties. Need assistance. Right front in woods MGs. My position on ridge—also woods to left front MGs. Request directions of assistance.” Colonel Merritt Edson dispatched halftracks and 37 mm guns to assist his beleaguered 1st Battalion, but these weapons could not reach Co C on the steep slopes of Hill 78. Edson sent 1/5 a message giving coordinates of the regimental aid station and simultaneously directed the 1st Battalion’s reserve—Co B, with attached machine guns—to Shine’s position.
A Marine mortar team camps a few feet in front of where this photo is captured. Thick vegetation offered excellent concealment for Co A Marines and Japanese enemies. USMC.
For two hours on the morning of Nov. 1, 1942, C/1/5 endured a hell of fire the likes of which few other American units experienced on Guadalcanal. The 7th Company of Major Masao Tamura’s 4th Infantry had planned their defenses well, digging sturdy bunkers out of coral rock and expertly camouflaging their positions. Any Americans who approached would be trapped in a jungle-choked ravine: relief or retreat could only happen by crossing the steep, bare western slope of Hill 78, exposed to flat trajectory fire from Hill 84. Japanese mortars and artillery dropped along the ravine and ridge, and concealed field pieces ripped through foliage and flesh at point-blank range. Their patience and preparations paid off as Crosby’s platoon melted away.
By order or by general assent, Co C recoiled from the vicious positions in the ravine. Crosby’s survivors fell back to the ridge, bearing the body of their fallen leader. Pvt William Frank Seiverling of Drexel Hill, Pa., staged a one-man counterattack and charged down the barren slope, blazing away with his Browning Automatic Rifle to cover the platoon’s reorganization and withdrawal. Seiverling then ran a gauntlet of fire to assist Holland’s platoon, “killing several Japanese before he, himself, was hit by machine-gun fire.” Bleeding heavily, Seiverling opened fire on the enemy gun and silenced it before heading for safety. He was too late: another Nambu chattered, and the 22-year-old Marine fell to the ground, never to move again.
Not far away, Corporal Terrence Joseph Reynolds Jr., another Pennsylvania Marine, was writing his name in the history books. “Terry” was a fanatical athlete, and his buddies all knew his dearest ambition was to get his name on the sports page of a major newspaper. He came close on the baseball diamond and closer still as a boxer but never quite clinched a championship. On Nov. 1, 1942, the sportsman showed his true mettle. As Co C made its “temporary organizational withdrawal,” Reynolds picked up a light Browning machine gun and waded into a Japanese attack, firing from the hip and blunting the enemy thrust. He was shot down moments later, still well forward of friendly lines. Seiverling and Reynolds were both posthumously decorated with the Navy Cross.
These heroics bought time for Co C to withdraw and reorganize about 250 yards short of the O-1 line. Sensing an opportunity, Tamura’s men counterattacked through the ravine. Sergeant Carl Weiss, who had already knocked out an enemy emplacement with a grenade, directed the fire of his machine guns against “the infuriated Japanese” who charged up the hill with fixed bayonets. When a wounded Marine rolled down the slope into the crossfire, Weiss crawled through the spitting bullets and dragged the man to safety. The sergeant would also receive the Navy Cross—posthumously, as he was killed in action the following day.
On the northern slope of Hill 78, Tony Casamento clung to his position. Bullet wounds ran from his instep to his ear; a round passed through his neck, and the corporal used his shirt as a makeshift bandage. Japanese troops crept towards the gun and began throwing grenades and insults. “Retreat, Marine!” they shouted. “Tojo says you must die!” Casamento, “mad as hell,” jumped up and danced “like a crazy man,” challenging the Japanese to get him. His curses came out as a breathy whistle: the bullet through his neck clipped his vocal cords. “I know if I pass out, those goddamn Japanese will rush up, grab my gun, turn it around, and start mowing down our own men about 100 yards behind me.” Grenade shrapnel smashed his right hand. Unable to load his machine gun, Casamento first tried to pick up a rifle, then Robarts’ sidearm, but his strength failed. Finally felled by concussion “like the kick of a mule,” the corporal began to lose hope.
Japanese dugouts on Guadalcanal were made from coral and cocoa palm leaves. Cpl Ernest A. Mathews, USMC.
“I can’t budge. Every time I try, it hurts all over. It’s getting so I can’t see things very well. I’m waiting to die, but I don’t want to die. I keep thinking of my mother and father, and how close it is to Christmas … Any minute I figure the Japanese will be there and stick me, but what worries me is that gun. Any minute they’ll be here and train my own gun on the fellows behind me, and they’ll raise hell with us, and our boys won’t know what it’s all about—one of their own guns shooting at them.”
Casamento could barely make out a figure moving toward him, bayonet at the ready.
It was a Marine. Co B had arrived.
Second Lieutenant Maurice Raphael was appalled at the carnage atop Hill 78. Japanese fire had ripped a hole in the line between companies C and A; Raphael’s platoon of Co B filled the gap. “As we were moving across this hill that was covered with dead and dying men, I came across this body all covered with blood,” he said. “My men had bayonets on their rifles and were ready to bayonet this ‘thing,’ when all of a sudden, I recognized Casamento. I cried out, ‘My God, Casamento, what have they done to you?’ He was a bloody mess, and he did a lot of jabbering about the Japanese and his men, crying about losing all of them. Empty rounds of MG ammo were all over the place.” Raphael pulled out his aid kit and bandaged the worst of Casamento’s many wounds, helplessly muttering, “Don’t you worry, fella, don’t you worry.” Incredibly, Casamento survived his ordeal; in 1980, he received a long-overdue Medal of Honor.
Raphael tried to make sense of the slaughter as his men carried Casamento to the rear. He recognized many of the battered bodies personally: Raphael had served as a Co C platoon leader for months and led some of these men in combat before transferring to Company B on Oct. 1, 1942. Each fallen figure was like a punch in the gut. “Saw Ausili die,” he wrote in his diary. “Louis Kovacs was dead but still warm, Harland Swart, Carlson, Potocki, Doucette, Waterstraw … everyone was dead … shot to hell and back. It was the saddest and most awful sight I’ve ever seen in my life. I saw Jack Holland, leader [of] 2nd Platoon, shot in the shoulder. Henry Loughman was shot in the groin and died … I found Crosby’s body … poor fellow, he never knew what hit him.”
An observation post atop Hill 78 near where Cpl Casamento’s squad fought on Nov. 1, 1942. Courtesy of Dave Holland.
Second Lieutenant Richard F. Nellson commanded the machine-gun platoon attached to Co B. “I went forward to reconnoiter for suitable machine-gun positions,” he reported. “I saw Casamento at his gun position. All of his men and those of C Company in his sector were dead or wounded. Casamento was riddled by small arms fire but was still at his gun.” It was evident that Casamento’s courage prevented Japanese troops from scaling the ridge and dropping flanking fire onto Co A on the flats below. Next, Nellson and his runner found Cpl Shaner’s machine gun. “It was in a shell hole, but both [the] gunner and his assistant were dead,” Nellson continued. “We put the gun out of action and returned to our lines. Shaner’s gunner had not had time to fire a full belt before he was killed.” As Co C treated their wounded and calmed their nerves, Captain “Tabasco Mac” McIlheney’s men pushed forward down the ridge and into the ravine, finally securing their section of the O-1 line at 11:30 a.m.
Impatient officers at Division Headquarters wasted no time in issuing new orders: in one hour, all units were to press on to the O-2 line, a half-mile beyond Point Cruz. By now, it was clear that the Japanese facing 1/5 had no intention of retreating to Kokumbona; instead, they were determined to defend a strong position near the base of the Point. This “pocket” was soon surrounded by Marines, but, unfazed by the prospect of death, the defenders contested every step with the massive arsenal at their disposal. Companies B and C crossed the stream marking the O-1 line, but Major Tamura’s men fought so desperately that the Marines made no more headway. The two sides traded blows in a bloody jungle brawl, fighting each other to exhaustion while trying to gain a tactical advantage.
Co A had slightly better success along the coast and managed to advance about 800 yards. They also ran into determined defenders—in this case, Japanese artillery positions supported by entrenched infantry. As the machine gunners deployed, Private Baumann saw his buddy Private Thomas C. White moving out ahead of his squad, pistol in hand. “Seeing [a] trap, he turned to get back to his gun,” recalled Baumann. “Was shot then. Bullets went in [White’s] back and came out chest. White died in about two minutes. No aid available.” Minutes later came the order to withdraw—just a hundred yards back, giving mortars room to fire. Baumann, the assistant gunner, was responsible for carrying the dismounted Browning. “I picked up [the] gun, put it on my shoulder and start[ed] back, suddenly I got a terrific whack on the back of my head, knocked me down,” he wrote. “MG went flying. Didn’t know what hit me. Placed my hand on back of head and saw it was full of blood.” Pharmacist’s Mate Wesley Haggard bandaged the wound and sent Baumann toward the beach to await evacuation by boat. He was shocked to see so many men from his company “in a bad way” on the beach. “Bonin, Kapanoske, Whalen, Wells, and others … . Few of our boys were killed. In all, D Company caught hell.” Co A fought on until catching the sound of vehicle motors approaching along Government Track. Fearful of a tank attack and with their left flank in the air, Company A gave up its gains and returned to the O-1. Despite all the chaos, only two A/1/5 Marines—Privates Charles H. Ludwig and John Monaco—died during the day’s fighting. The exact number of casualties among the attached machine-gunners is not known.
Corpsmen bring back a wounded Marine from the front lines on Guadalcanal. Forty-one Marines from 1st Bn, 5th Marines died during the fight on Nov. 1. (USMC photo)
There was little sympathy for 1/5 at Division Headquarters. As early as 10:30 a.m., senior officers debated replacing the battalion on the front line with a unit from the 2nd Marines, but Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Thomas (D-3) resisted; he would not mollycoddle what he considered a sub-par outfit. “They’ve had too much of that,” he grumbled. That evening, “it was learned that 1/5 has not yet even passed O-1,” noted Lieutenant Herbert Merillat. “Much disgust at headquarters … 1/5 will never get anywhere, D-3 officers say, and 3/5 wouldn’t do any better.” In reality, the battalion had given a good account of itself on a challenging assignment. On Nov. 1, 1942, Major Tamura’s battalion “vanished.” The 7th Company, which caused so much havoc at Hill 78, could muster barely a dozen men by nightfall, and his other companies were in tatters. It would take two more days and five Marine companies to wipe out the Point Cruz pocket. Three hundred and fifty Japanese soldiers were killed, and Marines captured three field pieces, a dozen antitank guns, and 30 machine guns. “Impatience at the CP with the performance of the 5th Marines shows the gulf that often divides a division staff from officers and men on the front line,” admitted Merillat.
The Body Count
While it seems that 1/5 gave better than they got, their casualty report was staggering. Twenty-five Marines were wounded on Nov. 1 alone, while 41 were either killed outright or died of wounds suffered in action. The unusual ratio of killed to wounded speaks to the close-up savagery of the fighting. Twenty-seven of the dead were from C/1/5: no other Marine company suffered so many fatal casualties in a single action during the entire Guadalcanal campaign.
Among the dead were Robert M. Eastburn and Matthew J. Kirchner, high school classmates and neighbors from Riverside, N.J., who enlisted, trained, and fought side by side. Pvt Frank W. Lawton of Springfield, Mass., joined up with two buddies from Technical High School; Robert Burdick and Edward Gray were left to mourn his loss. Pvt Austin W. Pollock Jr.’s demise made the Kentucky newspapers: he killed five Japanese soldiers, reports claimed, before running into the line of fire to cover his sergeant. Pvt Anthony Antonoglou endured years at an infamous Florida reform school; he attacked an abusive teacher and opted to join the Marine Corps to avoid prison time. Privates Theodore Potocki, William Zeigler, William Hall, and Arthur Doucette died before reaching their 18th birthdays.
Nov. 2 was a day of dramatic action at the Point Cruz pocket, culminating in a series of bayonet charges by 3/5—the only such attack by Marine units on Guadalcanal. Meanwhile, 1/5 faced the unwelcome challenge of disposing of dozens of dead men. Extreme heat exacerbated the problem: temperatures reached the triple digits, straining American ability to supply their fighters and evacuate the wounded, let alone arrange transport for the fallen. As a result, 30 of the 41 men killed in action were buried in the field at a point “about 400 yards west of Point Cruz [and] about 600 yards inland from the sea.” The Marines had every intention of returning for the bodies—but two days later, American forces withdrew to the Matanikau in response to a perceived threat from Koli Point, far to the east. All of the ground taken was back in Japanese hands. It would take another few weeks of hard fighting to regain the territory—and the front lines would freeze along the Nov. 1 O-1 line until the very end of the campaign.
It is surprising, therefore, that 23 of the 30 field burials are still unrecovered. No other battle on Guadalcanal resulted in so many field burials in a relatively small area—and American troops occupied the location for months—yet there are no known reports of Marine or Army personnel even noticing the graves, let alone making attempts to retrieve remains, even after the battle ended. The first graves were rediscovered in March 1944: Pvt Pollock (Co B), Cpl Reynolds (Co D), Sergeants Louis Kovacs and Harland Swart Jr., and Pvt Albert Ausili (Co C) were exhumed by Army Graves Registration and reburied in the island’s military cemetery. Cpl William F. Wheeler (Co C) was discovered in 1945, and Pvt Lawrence Keane (Co C) was found in an isolated grave during a post-war search. The rest have vanished.
The story of Merton Taylor provides a clue to the others’ whereabouts. As a member of C/1/5, Taylor survived the All Saints’ Day debacle but saw four friends cut down around him. He witnessed their burial, which “necessarily consisted simply of placing the fallen comrades in foxholes, covering them with stones, and marking the graves with tiny sticks and bayonets.” Taylor swore to make sure his buddies got “a decent burial,” but malaria forced his evacuation from the island days after the battle. After attending intelligence school at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, he returned to the island in September 1944 as a member of the 29th Marines. Naturally, Taylor visited the cemetery—where he was evidently told in error that his buddies were not there.
According to the Marine Corps Chevron, Taylor went looking for the spot where he thought the graves to be. “It wasn’t as easy as he expected. The ridge, bare of growth when he was there before, was now covered with dense brush,” reads the article. “For two days, he searched every inch of the ridge. Then he found a rusty bayonet splitting a stick to form a crude cross … then a second cross, the third, and finally the last.”
A press photographer snapped Taylor pointing out a marker to an Army Graves Registration officer, 1stLt John L. Stewart. The story is moving, but problematic: Taylor and Stewart arrived on Guadalcanal months after Kovacs, Swart, and Ausili had been reburied in the cemetery, and no other 1/5 remains were found while either man was on the island. Whomever Taylor found was not his combat buddies; indeed, the photograph may have been staged and the story enhanced. A compelling kernel of truth remains, though. It is highly likely that the missing dead were initially buried in foxholes where they fell instead of a regulation field cemetery.
Today, the National Parliament of the Solomon Islands sits atop the site where Tony Casamento’s squad fought their final battle. Roads and residences run through the ravine, and the creek marking the O-1 line has vanished beneath the city of Honiara. Under these buildings, singly or in small groups, lie the remains of the 1st Bn, 5th Marines—forgotten victims of a hard-fought victory.
Author’s note: Special thanks to Dave Holland for his contributions to this article, and Colonel Pam Baumann, USMC (Ret) for permission to publish extracts from her father’s diary.
Author’s bio: Geoffrey W. Roecker is a researcher and writer based in upstate New York. His extensive writings on the WW II history of 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, is available online at www.1-24thmarines.com. Roecker is the author of “Leaving Mac Behind: The Lost Marines of Guadalcanal” and advocates for the return of missing personnel at www.missingmarines.com.
The Marine Corps was at the center of President John F. Kennedy’s plan to remove Castro from power and block Soviet military buildup in Cuba. (Photo courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)
A row of MAG 26 A-4 Skyhawks line up at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Multiple aerial surveillance missions were conducted to monitor Cuban military activity. (DOD photo)The path to a first direct military confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union became possible when Fidel Castro’s communist revolution toppled Cuban President Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959.
Gen David M. Shoup, 22nd Commandant of the Marine Corps, left, and ADM George W. Anderson Jr., Chief of Naval Operations, center, meet with President Kennedy at the White House to discuss escalating missile threats in Cuba. (Photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
At the center of President John F. Kennedy’s joint U.S. military invasion plan to remove Castro from power and block the Soviet military buildup in Cuba was the U.S. Marine Corps. Documents declassified over the last decade, along with firsthand accounts, provide fascinating, previously unknown details of the Marine Corps’ role in planning and the II Marine Expeditionary Force’s (II MEF) part in executing the invasion that never was.
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara; Gen David M. Shoup, the 22nd Commandant of the Marine Corps; and President Kennedy observe an amphibious landing demonstration conducted by the II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, April 17, 1962. (Photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
The Cold War Heats Up
A New Year’s Day parade in Havana on Jan. 1, 1962, provided the world with the first tangible proof of just how far Cuba’s military relationship with the Soviet Union had come. According to the U.S. Atlantic Command’s “Historical Account of the Cuban Crisis,” on parade that day were 60 modern Soviet-made fighter/attack aircraft, light cargo transports, and helicopters as well as thousands of uniformed and well-equipped Cuban infantry followed by artillery pieces, tanks, and an array of armored vehicles. Reports estimated that Castro’s conventional ground forces ranged from 75,000 to 100,000 soldiers, a far cry from the 300 or so that had overthrown Batista three years earlier. The Joint Chiefs asked Admiral Robert L. Dennison to keep Cuban invasion planning the U.S. Atlantic Command’s highest priority. Dennison in turn directed his planners to amend its active Cuban invasion plan, OPLAN 314-61, to reflect the realities of this new Cuban army.
Throughout early 1962, Dennison had planners draft two new courses of action. One, OPLAN 316-61, was a “quick reaction” version of OPLAN 314-61 and provided only five days of preparations (including airstrikes) before the airborne assault, with amphibious assaults occurring three days or less thereafter. The second plan, OPLAN 312-62, was an air strike-only option with the II MEF reinforcing and expanding the Guantanamo perimeter.
With the invasion becoming less likely despite disconcerting intelligence reports, President Kennedy communicated his resolve through American TV and newspapers. What were normally routine training exercises received national media attention. On April 17, Kennedy and several senior cabinet and Department of Defense officials traveled to Camp Lejeune, N.C., to observe one of several II MEF amphibious exercises taking place along the Atlantic seaboard that spring. On hand were Marine Corps Commandant General David M. Shoup, ADM Dennison and his staff, and the II MEF’s new commanding general, Lieutenant General Robert B. Luckey. Lance Corporal Stanley E. Gunn from 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines recalled the exercise: “It’s not every day that you get to train in front of the president, so a lot of us thought Kennedy’s visit was more than to observe an amphibious landing exercise. It was a final rehearsal.”
Senior cabinet and DOD officials attended the II MEF amphibious landing exercise held at Camp Lejeune. More than 38,000 Marines were spread across two amphibious task forces, 58 ships and four bases in preparation for a Cuba invasion. (Photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)LtGen Robert B. Luckey, Commanding General, II Marine Expeditionary Force. (USMC photo)Fidel Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev appearing together in public, circa 1960. (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)
Fidel Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev received Kennedy’s message. The Central Intelligence Agency’s September 1962 report “The Military Buildup in Cuba” linked a Soviet cargo ship surge in Cuba in August (55 dockings) and September (66 dockings) to a plan to rapidly “strengthen Cuban defenses against air attack and seaborne invasion.” Delivered to Cuban ports were Soviet-manned SA-2 guided surface-to-air missiles, Soviet-made Badger medium-range bombers, and Komar guided-missile patrol boats, all a clear indication that Castro believed an amphibious assault was imminent. In addition, the CIA estimated as many as 20,000 Soviet military personnel were on the island as stand-ins until trained Cubans could replace them. Most alarming was the CIA’s warning of the potential for Khrushchev to deploy an army group and offensive and nuclear strike capabilities (air, surface, and submarine) to Cuba, though the latter was a significant departure from Soviet policy.
Within weeks of Kennedy stepping up aerial surveillance missions over Cuba, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft produced “hard photographic evidence … that the Russians [had] offensive missiles in Cuba.” Kennedy wanted confirmation before taking any action. The Joint Chiefs and ADM Dennison tasked the Navy and Marine Corps with providing that confirmation. On Oct. 17, Marine RF-8A Crusader crews from 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing’s Marine Composite Reconnaissance Squadron 2 endured Cuban ground fire during dozens of photographic missions flown as low as 50 feet above the jungle landscape. “We would go around the island and triangulate to find the radar sites,” retired Lieutenant Colonel Richard Conway explained years later. “We sent that back to Washington, so when they planned our targets, they knew where the sites were. They could direct us over one, over another and another in a straight line because we had located those sites for them.”
President Kennedy met with his national security team and the Joint Chiefs to review the photographs and weigh his options. The military leadership agreed unanimously to air strikes aimed at destroying only the sites. A ground invasion, they offered, would be needed to seize the missiles intact. The objective would then shift to defeating Soviet and Cuban forces and removing Castro from power.
Atlantic Command planners revised OPLAN 314-61 and OPLAN 316-61 to reflect the priorities and objectives. Meanwhile, President Kennedy delayed offensive military action for at least 90 days to give diplomacy a chance, but adopted from OPLAN 314-61 the naval quarantine course of action in conjunction with posturing the invasion force to act on a moment’s notice. To do this, the Joint Chiefs directed ADM Dennison in an Oct. 26 memorandum to “abandon OPLAN 314 and concentrate on OPLAN 316-62.”
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took office in 1953 after the death of Joseph Stalin and allied with Fidel Castro during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
An aerial view of the MRBM Field Launch Site in San Cristobal, Cuba, photographed Oct. 14, 1962. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
An aerial view of Battery C, 3rd Light Anti-Aircraft Missile Battalion on John Paul Jones Hill, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (DOD photo)
Operation Scabbards
While the diplomatic process played out, invasion forces entered quietly into Phase I of OPLAN 316-62. As a testament to the former II MEF commander’s forward thinking, more than 4,000 Marines of the 4th Marine Amphibious Brigade (MAB) were already in the Caribbean preparing for Exercise Ortsac (Castro spelled backward), scheduled months earlier for the period of Oct. 15-30. The DOD secretly suspended the exercise on Oct. 20 but used it and the fast-approaching Hurricane Ella as a cover for moving ships and aircraft out to sea and to Caribbean bases.
LtGen Luckey activated the II Marine Expeditionary Force officially on October 23. In his role as Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic (FMFLant) commanding general, he requested on Oct. 19 that ADM Dennison land 2/2 (already in the Caribbean) at Guantanamo Bay and ordered Major General Frederick L. Wieseman to have one of his 2nd Marine Division battalions reinforce them as planned and begin moving his units to their embarkation points. Two days later 1st Battalion, 8th Marines joined 2/2 in Cuba as the core of Brigadier General William R. Collins’ Marine Ground Force Guantanamo. The situation caught many Marines by surprise. “We were in Vieques and we started training to invade Cuba but we didn’t know it,” recalled 2/2’s LCpl Ralph E. Johnson. “They told us to go down to Red Beach and a ship would pick us up. We got on board and they said we were headed to Cuba.”
BGen Collins’ aerial reconnaissance of Guantanamo Bay resulted in a request for a third battalion. With the only available units embarking ships, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps (HQMC) tasked Fleet Marine Force, Pacific (FMFPac) with providing the battalion. The 1st Marine Division’s 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines flew from Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in California late on Oct. 21. The battalion was in fighting positions and running patrols the next day. They were not the only unit from FMFPac to receive deployment orders.
MajGen Frederick L. Wieseman, (pictured as lieutenant general)Commanding General, 2nd Marine Division. Courtesy of Marine Corps History Division
BGen William R. Collins (pictured as major general), Commanding Officer, Marine Ground Force, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Courtesy of Marine Corps History Division.
BGen William T. Fairbourn, (pictured as major general) Commanding General, 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade. (USMC photo)During planning in July 1961, 2ndMarDiv staff raised concerns over conducting “assault landing operations” so soon after seizing Tarara. HQMC agreed and directed FMFPac to create a brigade for the invasion. Given the Cuban Army’s increased capabilities and the potential for direct Soviet military involvement, LtGen Luckey requested on Oct. 23 that BGen William T. Fairbourn’s 5th Marine Amphibious Brigade (MAB) be activated and assigned as Landing Group East and the II MEF’s reserve. FMFPac received the activation message that same day. The entire brigade had to be embarked within 96 hours. Four days later the 9,000 Marine air-ground force departed southern California on board 20 amphibious ships, including the Navy’s newest purpose-built amphibious assault carrier USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2). Embarked were 1st Marines and its two remaining battalions; 1st and 3rd Battalions, 7th Marines; Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 361; and a logistics support group. Marine Aircraft Squadron 121 and Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352, with 3rd Light Anti-Aircraft Missile Battalion on board, flew ahead of the ships to assume firing positions at Key West, Florida, and Guantanamo Bay naval stations.
The brigade’s only stop was a brief one inside the Panama Canal, where BGen Fairbourn noted, in an interview years later, that his Marines “loaded blood and a hundred coffins onto the carrier Iwo Jima dockside in Panama” in hopes that there was an audience watching. “And then we sailed.” Private First Class Thad McManus of 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, on board USS Okanogan (APA-220), remembered how loading the coffins “was supposed to impress the Soviets.” The ploy, however, “sure impressed us.” Just before departing, Fairbourn received a naval message with orders “to land on the coast of Cuba, seize Santiago, and march on Havana.”
Gen Shoup speaks with a Marine from 2/1 in defensive positions at Guantanamo Naval Base. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
PFCs Robert Broughton and Mimmy R. Isabell of 1/8 set their 81 mm mortar on enemy positions along the Main Line of Resistance. (Photo courtesy of Marine Corps History Division)
A Marine from 2/2 watches over the approaches to Guantanamo Naval Base during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Courtesy of National Archives.With more than 38,000 Marines “mounting out,” LtGen Luckey faced the unenviable challenge of commanding and controlling from Norfolk a force scattered throughout the Atlantic and Caribbean. To take advantage of the communications infrastructure, Luckey and the II Marine Expeditionary Force command element operated from FMFLant command center. There, Luckey and his staff would synchronize air and ground actions by units embarked on two amphibious task forces spread over 58 ships and four bases. The challenge was not lost on even the most junior Marines. “I know that the high ranks thought it was a complete (mess) logistically, command scattered all over the fleet, plans being re-done all the time, but that was way above me,” PFC McManus recalled.
MajGen Wieseman’s staff had the arduous process of organizing 2ndMarDiv, the bulk of Landing Group West, into assault elements. Spread out over 40 ships were 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines with attached artillery batteries from 10th Marines, engineers from 2nd Pioneer Battalion, tanks from 2nd Battalion, and amphibious tractors from 2nd Amphibian Assault Battalion, all of the battalions and combat support attachments of 6th Marines, and 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines and 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, reinforced by combat support attachments. His 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing counterpart, MajGen Richard C. Mangrum, faced a similar test in commanding and controlling Marine Aircraft Groups 14, 24, 26, 31, and 32 and several independent combat aviation and support squadrons operating from aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, and the Cecil Field, Key West, Roosevelt Roads, and Guantanamo Bay airfields.
MajGen Richard C. Mangrum, (pictured as lieutenant general) Commanding General, 2nd Marine Air Wing, 1961-1963. (USMC photo)
LCpl Ralph Maynard and Cpl James K. Campbell from 1/8 defend the Main Line of Resistance, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Courtesy of Marine Corps History Division.
President Kennedy presents personal and unit awards to Navy and Marine Corps aviators at Naval Air Station Cecil Field in Florida for their actions in support of surveillance operations over Cuba October-December 1962. (Photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
Standing Down After 13 days of tense negotiations that kept the world on the brink of nuclear war, the crisis subsided when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev reached an agreement on Oct. 28. In exchange for Khrushchev removing all Soviet nuclear and non-nuclear offensive capabilities from Cuba, Kennedy promised to remove all American nuclear missiles from Turkey at a future date. Had the invasion occurred, the II MEF would certainly have landed at Tarara to establish the beachhead for 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions to pass through.
Naval aviators CDR William Ecker, left, and Capt John Hudson, right, shake hands, after President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev reached an agreement on Oct. 28, 1962. (Photo courtesy of Michael Dobbs)
Soviet freighter Kasimov withdraws from Cuba carrying 15 IL-28 “Beagle” bombers on deck. (Photo courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)Planners changed the 1st Armored Division’s land site back to Regla, inside the Port of Havana, after 2ndMarDiv handed off Tarara, attacked west to clear the northern coast, secured the Morro Castle at the entrance of the Port of Havana, and secured Regla. In the event of a delay, the armor landing site was to shift farther west to the Port of Mariel. According to Atlantic Command’s 1963 historical account, estimated casualties in the 260,000 American invasion force (150,000 ground forces) were 18,484 killed, 8,182 of those coming from the II MEF with 4,462 on the first day alone. Planners estimated 800,000 Cuban servicemen and civilians would perish during the anticipated 15 days of combat operations.
Within days of Kennedy and Khrushchev’s agreement the II MEF stood down incrementally. Most of its units were back at their bases by Christmas. The 5th MAB was back in California by Dec. 10, including 2/1. BGen Fairbourn disbanded the brigade but kept his staff together to finalize plans reflecting the Atlantic Command’s updated invasion schemes following OPLAN 316-63’s approval by the Joint Chiefs in early January 1963 and the II MEF’s updated component plan. In the event Khrushchev did not comply, the brigade made plans for assault landings at Matanzas and Mariel and to retake Guantanamo Bay or Santiago de Cuba, if necessary.
The 1st Battalion, 6th Marines remained afloat in the Caribbean for another two months as part of a multinational observation force. “I was on the deck of the Okinawa when we saw the Russian ships leaving Cuba,” PFC Robert P. Hemingway recalled decades later. “The missiles were plainly visible with binoculars on the decks of the Russian ships.”
To maintain their readiness, all units took advantage of training opportunities at Guantanamo Bay and Vieques, including those awaiting orders to redeploy to Camp Lejeune.
Then-1stLt William M. Keys with his platoon sergeant on board USS Boxer (CV-21) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Keys was aboard an OH-43D Huskie helicopter that crashed at sea in early December 1962. (Photo courtesy of LtGen William M. Keys, USMC (Ret))During an exercise in early December, a Kaman OH-43D Huskie helicopter from Marine Observation Squadron One crashed into the Atlantic Ocean forward of USS Boxer (CV-21) during a fire support training exercise. On board the two-man aircraft was First Lieutenant William M. Keys, who, as a platoon commander in 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, was on a temporary assignment to the squadron as an aerial observer. Knocked out upon impacting the water, 1stLt Keys regained consciousness just as Boxer ran directly over top of the wreckage with him trapped inside. “I somehow kept my composure and focus, freed myself, and swam to the surface where a rescue helicopter pulled me out of the water,” Keys explained. His commanding officer, LtCol Earl W. Cassidy, attributed Keys’ “physical condition and presence of mind” to his surviving the crash. Some 20 years later MajGen Keys would lead 2ndMarDiv in liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in February 1991 and, later, command both the II MEF and FMFLant as a lieutenant general from 1991 to 1994. (Editor’s note: The article “Genesis of the Second Breach,” from the August 2022 issue explains more about Keys’ role during Operation Desert Storm.)
The magnitude of the crisis surprised many. “No one knew they had nukes down there. We were aware they had missile sites that put Washington, D.C., and a few other places in range,” retired Col Edward Love said long afterward. President Kennedy presented the Distinguished Flying Cross to Love and fellow Marine aviators Fred Carolan, Richard Conway, and John I. Hudson, who retired as a lieutenant general, for their heroic actions over Cuba. Some were shocked the invasion never materialized. Cpl Robert Thomas of 2nd MarDiv’s 2nd Pioneer Battalion recalled, “I thought we were going to war. It got serious for us when we started firing machine guns off the stern of the ship. We thought something might come out of it.”
Still others were just happy to play a part. “Sitting there watching the TV, you feel really proud about what you contributed,” LtCol Conway added years later. “It was a very rewarding experience.” Few were more pleased than Gen Shoup. “I couldn’t be happier about our readiness in this crisis,” he explained. “This time we not only have been ready, we’ve been steady.”
View of the wreckage of the VMO-1 OH-43D Huskie spotter helicopter that crashed into the water during the approach to USS Boxer (CV-21) in December 1962. (Photo courtesy of Lt Gen William M. Keys, USMC (Ret))
A sideview of USS Boxer (CV-21), refueling in Cuba, 1964. (USMC photo)Author’s bio: Dr. Nevgloski is the former director of the Marine Corps History Division. Before becoming the Marine Corps’ history chief in 2019, he was the History Division’s Edwin N. McClellan Research Fellow from 2017 to 2019, and a U.S. Marine from 1989 to 2017.
The 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) landed in Beirut, Lebanon, on May 29, 1983. The Marines came ashore with mixed feelings. They were the fourth MAU to cycle through Beirut in nine months. Marines that preceded them served as “peacekeepers” of a Multi-National Force (MNF) from the U.S., France and Italy. Despite a full-scale civil war raging around them, Marines were not to be combatants. No fewer than 17 separate political or religious factions fought over the war-torn capital city.
A web of politics shrouded the Marines’ understanding of their mission and limited their ability to respond to threats. Even so, the MNF’s presence seemed justified. Marines briefly pulled out of Beirut in September 1982. During their absence, the newly elected Lebanese president was assassinated, and Palestinian refugees were massacred in retaliation. Marines and the rest of the MNF returned within the month and maintained a steady presence into 1983.
Lieutenant Colonel Howard L. “Larry” Gerlach arrived in Beirut with the 24th MAU as the commanding officer of Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. The 41-year-old had over 19 years in the Corps by the time he assumed command of the battalion. His career included two years as an enlisted Marine before successfully completing the Naval Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (NROTC) program at the University of Mississippi and receiving an officer’s commission. He earned a Purple Heart as a second lieutenant in Vietnam when a bullet tore through his hip six weeks into his first deployment. Following an extensive recovery, he returned to full duty and later shipped out on a second combat deployment as an advisor to the Vietnamese army.
Marines from BLT 1/8 on patrol in Beirut, Lebanon, during the summer of 1983. 1stLt Miles Burdine, USMC.
One event dominated the minds of Gerlach and his Marines as they relieved their predecessors in Beirut. The month prior to their arrival, on April 18, a vehicle laden with explosives detonated next to the U.S. embassy. Sixty-three people died in the explosion, including one Marine Security Guard. Marines in Lebanon had suffered casualties prior to the bombing, and even saw one Marine killed while clearing unexploded ordnance around Beirut International Airport (BIA). The embassy bombing, however, was unprecedented. As the Marines of 1/8 considered their new home, they tried to decipher what the attack meant. Could it be, perhaps, an anomaly, or a one-off tragedy? Or, was it an ominous harbinger of a new era in Beirut?
The deployment kicked off peacefully, but soon began a steady descent into violence. The battalion’s first instance taking direct fire from the city arrived in the early morning hours of June 8. Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) detonated around an observation post at the Lebanese University, followed by a furious rattle of heavy machine-gun fire from Israeli soldiers. Whether Marines were the intended target or simply caught in the crossfire, the rockets from an unidentified source exploded on the Marines’ position, and Israeli .50-caliber bullets punched holes in sandbags. July and August saw more instances of rockets falling directly on Marine positions around BIA. Finally, on Aug. 28, the city erupted in violence following Israel’s withdrawal.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 impelled the MNF to initially deploy later that year in an effort to stabilize the country. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) presence in Beirut served a dual effect. They added to the bullets and rockets flying around the city, even engaged in several tense interactions with Marines. Fear or respect for the IDF, however, kept numerous other combatant factions at bay. These groups flooded the streets of Beirut after the IDF withdrew, filling the void they left and immediately increasing the number of attacks on the 24th MAU. Despite increasing hostilities, the Marines’ mission of “presence” and “peacekeeping” would not be altered, lest the U.S. appear to endorse one side or the other with an active combat role.
“We were told not to alter the defenses outside our command post because they wanted things to look as normal as possible,” remembered LtCol Gerlach. “This wasn’t a typical military operation. The missions you learned at The Basic School were attack, defend, withdraw, or reinforce. Well, we weren’t doing any of that. The last thing in the world we were supposed to do was be an overbearing military force in their country.”
An exterior view of the BLT barracks and headquarters building prior to the bombing that leveled the structure. (Photo by 1stLt Miles Burdine, USMC)
The Rules of Engagement (ROEs) governing the Marines remained strict. Marines could only shoot back if they were actively being fired upon and could see the attacker. Likewise, they were only permitted to respond with a level of force equal to the threat. A typical scene playing out might see a group of concealed militiamen blasting away at Marine positions. Abiding by the ROEs, Marines could fire back with rifles, and perhaps even a machine gun, until the militia fire stopped. Following the engagement, Marines looked on helplessly as the enemy fighters walked out of the building with rifles slung over their shoulders, laughing and shouting, “Bang! Bang!” as they formed guns with their fingers to continue “shooting” at the Marines. Without real bullets coming at them, the Marines could offer only a middle finger in response.
LtCol Larry Gerlach right, BLT 1/8 Commanding Officer, Col Tim Geraghty center, 24th MAU Commanding Officer, and CDR George Pucciarelli, left, 24th MAU Chaplain, perform a ribbon cutting at the opening of a new chapel for U.S. servicemembers at Beirut International Airport. Courtesy of Larry Gerlach.
Tragedy struck 1/8 on Aug. 29. A salvo of mortar rounds exploded among the tents of “Alpha” Company. Second Lieutenant George Losey and Staff Sergeant Alexander Ortega, the Platoon Commander and Platoon Sergeant of Alpha Co, 1st Platoon, sustained head wounds when one mortar scored a direct hit on their tent. Ortega died instantly, still seated in his chair next to the lieutenant. Losey survived to be medically evacuated but did not recover. In addition, five other Marines suffered minor wounds. The deaths of Losey and Ortega stunned the Marines in Beirut, and likewise shocked Americans back home whose perception of the “peacekeeping” mission in Lebanon found it hard to believe Marines could be caught in the crossfire.
The situation accelerated downhill. September witnessed Marines embroiled in the war surrounding them, returning fire with artillery and naval gunfire. Even Marine attack helicopters flying above the city came under fire and shot back with rockets. Despite the constant presence of American reporters and an unending flow of VIPs touring the city, it seemed no one outside Beirut could understand or believe what the Marines faced. Colonel Tim Geraghty, the 24th MAU Commanding Officer, and LtCol Gerlach took steps to upgrade security around the MAU headquarters and the four-story building serving as Gerlach’s BLT command post and barracks. Their proposed adjustments to ROEs and security posture met stiff resistance further up the chain of command. Military and civilian leaders not on the ground in Lebanon resolved to preserve the facade of a passive role in the war.
An aerial view of the remains of the BLT building in Beirut. The structure originally stood four stories tall before the explosion reduced it to less than two.
What Geraghty and Gerlach saw as reality and necessary steps to defend themselves, others viewed as a perversion of their mission of “presence.” If Beirut were a combat deployment, the Marines would plan out their defenses and take appropriate offensive actions. Still, stateside authorities refused to acknowledge Beirut as a combat theater, and limited their defensive capabilities based on political perception. They believed if the MAU were not combatants, they should not expand their positions around the airport, giving the impression of an active role in the combat. Even as American high explosive shells exploded within the city, erasing any perception of passivity the warring factions may have held, Gerlach struggled to procure jersey barriers to place outside his BLT building.
Attacks on the MAU increased. Even through an alleged “cease fire,” Marines paid the price for their presence. On Sept. 6, rockets exploded around Alpha Co positions, killing Lance Corporal Randy Clark and Corporal Pedro Valle and wounding several others. On Oct. 15, gunmen opened fire on Marine jeeps driving through the city. One Marine was shot through both legs. In another jeep, a bullet struck Staff Sergeant Allen Soifert in the chest. The jeep careened off the road and overturned. Others arrived to rescue the Marines, but Soifert died at the battalion aid station.
The following day, a rooftop observation post came under small arms and RPG fire. Several Marines were severely wounded in the attack. Captain Mike Ohler, a forward air controller, braved the fire to spot enemy positions with his binoculars. He located a bunker where the RPGs originated and directed fire onto it. As he observed the bunker, an enemy bullet fatally stuck Ohler in the head. On Oct. 19, Col Geraghty appeared to be the intended target of a car bomb. The bomb exploded less than a minute after Geraghty’s vehicle passed in a convoy, leaving Geraghty unscathed, but wounding four other Marines. Between the embassy bombing and the attack on Geraghty’s convoy, vehicle-borne explosives were gaining prominence as a terrorist’s weapon of choice. Marines on guard around American facilities kept on the lookout for suspicious vehicles.
The night of Oct. 22 was a busy one for Marines stationed at the BLT building. Machine-gun fire sparked off the pavement around the building, rousing the Marines manning guard posts. When several rockets landed nearby, the order came down to upgrade to “Condition One” alert status. Marines exited their bunks on the upper decks and descended the stairs to augment Marines already awake on watch. A tank rolled in front of the entrance to the building, blocking the front door. The high alert lasted several hours, extending into the early morning of Oct. 23. Once the alert status finally downgraded again, exhausted Marines returned to their bunks. Their only saving grace was that today, a Sunday, reveille would sound an hour later than normal, affording them precious extra sleep.
Over 300 Marines, Sailors, and soldiers bedded down once more and passed out. Gerlach was not one of them. His responsibilities as the battalion CO demanded his presence through the entirety of the condition one status, and well after it ended. Finally, around 6 a.m., Gerlach returned to his corner office on the second deck. He considered an attempt at sleep. As he turned toward his bunk, something flew through the air and smashed into his head, knocking him unconscious. To this day, Gerlach remembers nothing of the events that unfolded that Sunday morning. How he survived remains an even bigger mystery and miracle.
A large yellow box truck had circled the parking lot directly in front of the BLT building. Several Marines on guard observed the truck as it circled, then finally veered right and accelerated through concertina wire barricades. Abiding by their ROEs, Marines manned their posts with loaded magazines in their rifles, but no rounds in the chamber ready to fire. As the truck smashed through the obstacles barring the entry to the BLT building, Marines charged their weapons. By the time they opened fire, the speeding truck passed by and crashed through a sandbagged position at the front entrance to the building, where the tank had stood guard just hours before. The truck finally stopped in an atrium-style lobby that extended from the ground floor to the roof in an expansive shaft occupying the center of the structure.
A typical view in the war-torn streets of Beirut, as seen by Marines on patrol in the city. 1stLt Miles Burdine, USMC.
The driver then detonated several thousand pounds of explosives and the compressed-gas-enhanced explosion ripped through the BLT building. A Marine who witnessed the resulting mushroom cloud logged the time as 6:22 a.m.
LtCol Larry Gerlach, left, with SgtMaj Fred Douglas, BLT 1/8 Sergeant Major, in Beirut. SgtMaj Douglas was one of the 241 people killed in the barracks bombing.This striking photo depicts the massive crater left by the explosion inside the BLT building, leaving nothing resembling the original structure. 1stLt Miles Burdine, USMC.
The blast force equaled more than 12,000 pounds of TNT. Marines a mile away felt the earth shake and believed an artillery round must have scored a direct hit on their position. Immediately, the entire building collapsed onto the Marines inside, reducing from four stories down to barely more than a single story tall. The bomb disintegrated the 7-inch thick, reinforced concrete floor in the basement below the lobby, leaving in its place a crater measuring 39 by 30 feet, and 8 feet deep. Later analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation determined the bomb created the largest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded.
U.S. servicemembers around the airport raced toward the BLT building to begin rescue efforts within minutes after the bomb went off. They found a completely terrible and chaotic scene. A choking dust cloud hung in the air. Building parts and body parts littered the ground surrounding the mountain of rubble. The earth itself seemed to cry as the screams and moans of buried victims emerged. Rescuers freed Marines from beneath mounds of concrete. They struggled locating the sources of the pleas for help. Rescuers would work feverishly to uncover a Marine, only to discover the victim was already dead, and they were inadvertently piling more rubble onto another living victim nearby. Numerous Marines thought to be alive turned out to be dead. Numerous victims thought to be dead turned out to be alive once they were exhumed. When rescuers located a living Marine, someone would stay with him to keep him company until he was finally extricated, or he passed away. Despite the extraordinarily heroic rescue efforts and the arrival of heavy moving equipment later that morning, the last living victim was rescued around noon, six hours after the explosion. The sounds of the living lingered, traumatizing rescuers as they worked without end for days. Tragically, every remaining victim became a body recovery. In all, 241 U.S. servicemembers died as a result of the explosion.
Taken seconds after the blast occurred, this photograph from Marine positions on the 24th MAU perimeter captured the smoke rising from the devastated BLT building. USMC photo.
When LtCol Gerlach regained consciousness, he’d never been more confused in his life. He could not move anything. Nothing looked familiar. Even more concerning, he lay on his back surrounded by bearded, middle eastern men.
LtCol Larry Gerlach, left, with PFC John Blocher in Beirut. Blocher served as Gerlach’s driver in Lebanon and was one of the Marines killed in the Oct. 23 bombing. Courtesy of Larry Gerlach.
“What is your mission here?” one of the men asked.
Gerlach had no idea how he got there, or any memory of the events leading up to his present circumstances.
“I’ve been captured,” Gerlach concluded. “I’m a prisoner of war.”
Gerlach was, in fact, one of several casualties from the bombing that went temporarily “missing” in the rush to evacuate survivors. Rescue workers removed him from beneath the rubble near the outskirts of the blast sight. His weak pulse offered the only evidence of life. Gerlach suffered severe head trauma and compound fractures on multiple limbs. Hope for his survival waned as rescuers loaded Gerlach into the back of an ambulance and whisked him away. Somehow, Gerlach ended up at an Italian medical dispensary, which immediately triaged him as requiring care far above their capability. The Italians moved Gerlach to a Shiite Muslim hospital facility in Beirut. He lingered in a coma for three days before miraculously awaking. Unknown to him at the time, the hospital staff treated him exceptionally well, and likely saved his life.
As Gerlach recited his name, rank, and serial number and refused to cooperate with those he believed were his captors, an American reporter named Robin Wright discovered him in the hospital. Wright confirmed Gerlach’s location with the Marines responsible for tracking casualties, and after six days, a helicopter transported Gerlach to a ship offshore, and eventually to Germany for medical care. Most importantly, Wright called her mother in the States and told her to contact Gerlach’s wife, Patty, to inform her that her husband survived the attack.
Sketch map of the route taken by the terrorist bomber on the morning of Oct. 23, 1983. Long Commission Report.
For two weeks, medical workers moved Gerlach around from location to location, bed to bed, and room to room. His difficulty moving seemed a natural result of his extensive injuries. A specialized X-ray of his neck, however, revealed multiple fractures to his cervical spine and doctors ordered him immediately placed in a halo to stabilize his head and prevent further damage to his spinal cord. The traumatic brain injuries he suffered left Gerlach confused and incapable of understanding the events that led to his present condition. Weeks would pass before he could grasp the magnitude of what happened.
Recovery operations continued for a week following the bombing. Cranes lifted massive chunks of concrete and steel to exhume the bodies. Back in the U.S., the spirit to remain in Beirut dwindled and a political battle ensued debating the Marines’ withdrawal and options for a response to the bombing. Islamic terrorists, backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack. Little or no response from the U.S. ever materialized. Today, the Beirut embassy and BLT barracks bombings are considered some of the first blows struck in the Global War on Terror, and precursors to events like the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The 22nd MAU, with BLT 2/8, arrived in November. Their arrival was scheduled near the end of October but was delayed with orders diverting the MAU to Grenada in support of Operation Urgent Fury. The four-day operation began and ended as a combat deployment for the Marines involved. By contrast, Marines in Lebanon still officially operated as noncombatants on a peacekeeping mission, despite the U.S.’s growing role in the conflict and thousands of man hours invested to upgrade defenses in the wake of the barracks bombing. On Dec. 4, less than two weeks after the 22nd MAU arrived, two U.S. Navy fighters were shot down on a bombing mission over the city, killing one of the pilots. Later that evening, a Marine rooftop checkpoint came under heavy fire. Tragically, a rocket scored a direct hit, killing eight Marines.
Marine peacekeepers remained in Beirut less than six months after the barracks bombing. The increasing hostilities killed or wounded more American servicemembers. The incidents were met with escalated responses, including salvos from the massive 16-inch guns of USS New Jersey (BB-62) sailing offshore. By February 1984, the order arrived to leave Beirut. Marines conducted a noncombatant evacuation, removing 800 civilians from the embassy and surrounding area. On Feb. 9, Major Albert Butler succumbed to wounds received from an accidental discharge, becoming the final Marine to die in Beirut. The last of the Marines in the city relinquished control of BIA on Feb. 26.
America moved on from Beirut quickly. With the exception of the embassy and barracks bombings, the 18 months Marines spent in the city faded into history as a largely forgotten episode. For those who lived through the barracks bombing, either as a surviving victim or a rescuer, moving on proved more impossible. Their lives could never resemble what they had been prior to Oct. 23, 1983.
Larry Gerlach spent month after month in various hospitals recovering from his injuries. Responsibility fell to his wife to explain to him what had happened in Beirut, as his mental faculties rejuvenated near the end of 1983. He would never remember the bombing and the events immediately afterward and could not believe the BLT building had been completely demolished until he saw the terrifying images on the television.
“I have searched my soul, over and over,” reflected Gerlach recently, as he remembered his time recovering after the attack. “That’s all I had to do there for a while. I have racked my brain about what I could have done that would have solved the problem, but there wasn’t a damn thing. From the moment that truck entered the parking lot out front, the bomb would have destroyed the building.”
The spinal injuries he suffered in the blast, and the shuffling around immediately afterwards, left him permanently disabled. Doctors in the U.S. diagnosed him with incomplete quadriplegia; while not totally unusable, everything below his neck was affected. Gerlach determined to use his arms and legs as much as his new body would allow.
After nine months of intensive physical and occupational therapy at the spinal cord injury center of West Roxbury VA Medical Center, Gerlach achieved partial usage of his arms and legs, even working up the strength to walk on crutches. He retired from the Marine Corps in 1985 and moved into the civilian world as a defense contractor, then working with Headquarters Marine Corps, then onto his final career with Defense Logistics Agency. Despite limited wheelchair-friendly resources, Gerlach maintained his independence and refused to be a victim of his circumstances. He developed a method of entering and exiting his car to drive himself to work. He also became a tournament fisher and avid hunter.
Throughout his recovery and following his retirement, Gerlach remained in touch with his fellow Beirut veterans. He attended the 1986 dedication of the Beirut Memorial in Jacksonville, N.C., and returned to numerous anniversary gatherings in the following years. On the 25th anniversary, other Beirut veterans of 1/8 honored Gerlach in a special ceremony. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, an official change of command never occurred relieving Gerlach of his responsibility as battalion commander. At the anniversary gathering 25 years later, the remaining veterans stood in formation and presented Gerlach with the battalion’s colors.
LtCol Larry Gerlach, USMC (Ret) was interviewed for the documentary, “We Came In Peace,” in April 2021. The documentary is tentatively scheduled to be released in early 2024.
“Commanding BLT 1/8 was the highest honor of my life,” Gerlach said today. “I hope the Marines are proud of what they did. We tried to do something that was peace-loving, but it’s difficult to preserve something that just isn’t there to begin with. There’s a lot of people in this world, with a lot of people up to a lot of good, but there’s always some people up to a lot of bad. There’s always a certain percentage of people that harbor hateful feelings. Hopefully, they are counteracted by peace-loving people. That’s Gerlach’s philosophy anyway.
Marines and Sailors assist as heavy equipment is brought in to aid recovery efforts following the terrorist bombing of the BLT building. SSgt Randy Gaddo, USMC.
Editor’s note: We are publishing Col Patty Klop’s story to reinforce the importance of speaking openly about PTSD and other mental health issues and to encourage veterans to ask for help. For information about resources available to veterans, visit: https://www.mca-marines.org/blog/resource/resources-for-veteran-marines/
My name is Patty Klop. I have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I am not ashamed. I am a wife, mother, sister, and a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Following seven weeks of PTSD treatment in March of 2022, I received the most precious gift of my life—the empowerment to live life with joy and contentment.
As much as I prefer the privacy of my personal and professional life, especially since I am still serving in the Marine Corps Reserve, I am taking a tremendous risk by sharing my PTSD story. However, the worst thing I can do is to keep this gift to myself. Assuming the risk of being transparent and vulnerable as a senior Marine Corps officer, I feel it is my obligation to my sisters and brothers-in-arms to share this incredible gift as encouragement and possible inspiration.
In April 2006, I returned from a seven-month deployment to Iraq (Ramadi and Fallujah) in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I had a hard time adjusting to post-deployment life. Reflecting back during this difficult period, I now realize I was experiencing PTSD symptoms. The uncontrollable rage and angry outbursts were shocking and damaging to my family. I had never acted like that before.
Through Military One Source, I was referred to a counselor who assessed my symptoms of agitation, sleep disturbance, low energy, depressed mood, and irritability. At this point in my life, I was unmarried and had no children.
From May to October 2009, I deployed as the officer in charge of Personnel Retrieval and Processing (PRP) Detachment, also known as mortuary affairs, to Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As the first Marine Corps mortuary affairs unit to deploy to Afghanistan, we were assigned the daunting task of establishing the first Marine Corps Unit Collection Point. As a PRP team, we provided care in handling and preparing human remains for evacuation and subsequent repatriation to next of kin. This was an emotionally fatiguing job with repeated traumatizing experiences.
When I returned home from Afghanistan, I anticipated having the best year of my life with my recent promotion to lieutenant colonel, getting married, and surviving a combat deployment. I thought my exposure to a war-torn and under-developed country and the conditions of how the Afghan people lived would remind me of how good I have it as an American and to live life to the fullest. I thought I would see life through a perpetual optimistic lens, enjoying life for all its worth and embracing each precious moment.
MARFORRES Courtesy of Col Patty Klop, USMCR
On the contrary, I had one of the worst years of my life, as my emotions, especially anger, were out of control. The first six months of marriage was turbulent. I was irritable, easily agitated at the slightest annoyance, and extremely jumpy. My husband and I attended marriage counseling funded by Military One Source. I did not think my marriage was going to make it.
Col Patty Klop with her two sons. Courtesy of Col Patty Klop, USMCR.At this time, my PTSD symptoms were extremely severe with anxiety, agitation, anger, depressed mood, low energy/chronic fatigue, irritability, impatience, hypervigilance (extreme sensitivity to my environment’s noises, temperature, and activities), trouble sleeping coupled with haunting nightmares, loss of interest in activities that I used to enjoy, and feeling like my skin was crawling. I was not aware I had PTSD until our marriage counselor shared her insight about my symptoms.
Our counselor referred me to a psychiatrist who prescribed me anti-anxiety medication. I was reluctant to take prescriptions as I felt I reached an all-time low by taking medication for my mental health. I was a senior Marine Corps Officer. I should have control over my emotions and behaviors.
During the summer of 2010, I remembered vividly the moment I knew my prescription medication had taken effect. I was painting the spare bedroom, and I honestly felt my irritability and tension lifting and departing from my body. I finally felt relief and a calmness I had not experienced since I returned from Afghanistan. I instantly knew my experience of relief and calmness was the therapeutic effects of my prescription medication. I now knew that prescription medication was appropriate in my time of need.
In the military, and especially in the Marine Corps, I believe there is a stigma in admitting mental health problems and that pursuing treatment may be perceived as being weak. There is an expectation in the military to handle problems on one’s own.
I was fully aware of this stigma and that pursuing mental health treatment was counter-culture to the Marine Corps, especially as a senior officer. I was willing to take this risk because I needed help. I was not the same person when I returned from Afghanistan. My PTSD symptoms were progressively spinning out of control and negatively impacting my marriage.
According to the Stress Continuum Model on the Marine Forces Reserve website, I felt like I was living in the “yellow zone” of reacting while slipping forward and backward between the yellow zone and the orange zone. Just give me a lame excuse to advance into the orange zone and I pounce! I like to blame my hot-tempered Irish, fighting spirit as an excuse for my behavior. To be honest, I would like nothing more than to be confrontational, close the gap between me and my offender, and give them a piece of my mind after only the slightest provocation.
I also felt I was unworthy to receive PTSD treatment because I did not think I was qualified in meeting the criteria. I had a false impression that I needed to be an extremely burned-out combat veteran with severe and debilitating PTSD about to hit skid row to be admitted to inpatient PTSD treatment.
On the contrary, to successfully receive intense PTSD therapy, the veteran must be functional to a degree that enables him or her to be fully present, engaged and to participate in the process of individual counseling and group sessions as well as completing writing assignments.
When I finally checked in to the inpatient facility, I was still shell shocked from life and eager to get the help I desperately needed. When I arrived, all of my doubts that I was not worthy of PTSD treatment, that I did not meet the criteria of PTSD treatment, and that I should not take a seat reserved for another combat veteran, vanished instantly.
After a couple of days, I knew with every fiber of my being that I was in the right place. The PTSD treatment deeply resonated with me because it was exactly the relief that I was looking for. I was able to unpack the burdens of my PTSD, disarm them and hit the reset button on my life. It felt like God sent his best guardian angels to my flanks to pull me out of my pit of PTSD hell. My disposition slowly improved from dark ominous stormy clouds to clear blue skies.
Initially, I struggled with baring my soul about my traumatic combat experiences to a civilian who never served in the military a day in her life. As combat veterans, I sense we have a common mentality that only another combat veteran will understand us, which is true to an extent. Outside of therapy and a few close military comrades, I would certainly never share my combat experiences with anyone.
My therapist did not serve in the military. However, she was an expert in trauma and was unequivocally the best therapist I encountered after 16 years and more than 10 therapists. She may not have served in the military or in a combat zone but certainly understood my trauma and helped me navigate to a healthier state of mind.
Courtesy of Col Patty Klop, USMCR.
If I was stuck in a mentality that my therapist’s credibility and qualifications were as a combat veteran rather than a specialist in trauma, I would regret in missing out on her expertise. My narrow mindset would have truly prevented me from fully embracing the healing power of my PTSD treatment.
What I Experienced in PTSD Treatment
PTSD treatment was like a sanctuary for warriors to begin the healing process from the invisible wounds of combat trauma, which is what I desperately longed for the last 16 years of my life. The Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a self-discovery process of identifying thought patterns, emotions and behaviors that were weighing me down from living my best life. I was immersed in a safe and nurturing environment where I was fully accepted without condemnation or shame of myself, my PTSD diagnosis or my past.
What I Did Not Experience in PTSD Treatment
I did not experience a lecture or an unending infomercial of how screwed up I was. I honestly felt like damaged goods but not once did I receive unsolicited advice about how I was doing life wrong, or how bad and destructive my behavior was, or how out of control I was in being a wife and a mother. Not once did I receive condemnation, shame or disapproval for my PTSD diagnosis.
Instead, I was guided in a self-discovery process of exploring my thought patterns, which were challenged and rewritten towards a healthier baseline. Thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to results. Everything begins with thoughts, which are produced by the mind. The mind is a battlefield!
What I learned in PTSD Treatment
I approached my health holistically: mental, social, physical, and spiritual health. The mind, body and spirit are connected. The best metaphor to describe wellness is imagining the four legs of a table. Each leg represents a major component of health, to include physical, mental, social, and spiritual.
If one leg of the table is too long, then I am spending excessive time in that component of health, such as physical exercise. If one leg of the table is too short, then I am neglecting that component of health, such as my spiritual fitness. The legs of my table must be equal in length in order for me to reap the benefits of optimal health. If the legs of my table are not equal in length, then my foundation is wobbly.
If I stand on my wobbly table, there is a propensity for accidents and injuries that could have been prevented. My table is my foundation for life, especially in the daily grind; therefore, my table must be leveled to create a strong base and prevent the perpetual accidents and injuries that life throws at me.
Courtesy of Col Patty Klop, USMCR
Exercise serves a purpose for my physical and mental health. Exercise is my personal medicine for my PTSD symptoms, as it is a natural elixir to remedy anxiety, depression and stress with no negative side effects that medications may have. I definitely experience a positive change in my mood when I exercise. Conversely, I definitely experience irritability when I do not exercise.
Due to feeling chronically tired all the time and trying to lose a few pounds, I also pursued whole food, plant-based nutrition, as the health benefits are profound in achieving optimal health, preventing diseases and managing weight.
Health is one of the most important predictors of happiness. When it comes to health, my motto is “pay now or pay later.” In other words, there’s no successful procrastination option in taking care of your health. If you take care of your health today, you are preventing avoidable chronic health diseases. If you take care of your health tomorrow, you are reacting to avoidable chronic health diseases. Investing in my physical health was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I will never regret it.
Author’s note: This article is dedicated to my loving family and to the amazing staff at the VA Fort Thomas Division Trauma Recovery Center, Fort Thomas, Ky. I owe a debt of gratitude to this facility for giving me the most precious and invaluable gift that I have ever received in my life, which was the empowerment to live life with joy and contentment. My eternal gratitude!
Editor’s note: The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute DOD endorsement. The views presented are strictly of the author and do not represent official policy positions nor imply endorsements by the U.S. Department of Defense or any of its military services.
President John F. Kennedy speaks at a news conference in Washington D.C., 1961. The threat of nuclear missile sites in Cuba prompted the president to take defensive action. (Photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
On Oct. 14, 1962, photographic evidence produced by an American U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft revealed the construction of Soviet medium-range nuclear ballistic missile sites in Cuba a mere 90 miles off the southern coast of the continental U.S. Additional reconnaissance flights on Oct. 15 and 16 confirmed site construction as well as the presence of numerous ballistic missiles. One month prior, at the height of the Soviet Union’s military buildup in Cuba that began in 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy had warned Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that “if at any time the Communist build-up in Cuba were to endanger or interfere with our security in any way …. or if Cuba should ever …. become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies.” Although Cuba’s budding military relationship with the Soviet Union and the deployment of Soviet advisors and operational ground and aviation units to Cuba increased American-Soviet tensions, the presence of nuclear-capable offensive missiles brought the two superpowers closer to a direct military confrontation than at any point during their 47-year Cold War.
In both open and back-channel discussions with Soviet officials, President Kennedy demanded the construction of the sites cease and that the missiles be removed. To convince Khrushchev of his resolve, Kennedy ordered a U.S. invasion force, including more than 35,000 Marines, into positions off Cuba and throughout the Caribbean in anticipation of having to take direct military action. Among the tasks assigned to the II Marine Amphibious Force in military contingency plans was the largest amphibious assault since Okinawa in 1945 aimed at seizing the Port of Havana and follow-on amphibious and ground asaults to expand the perimeter of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. Drawn from documents maintained by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md., and the Marine Corps archives at Quantico, Va., this article reveals—for the first time to many—the Marines’ roles in the planning and execution plan for the invasion that never was.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff meet with President Kennedy in the cabinet room of the White House in Washington, D.C. From left to right: Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen Curtis E. LeMay; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, GEN Lyman L. Lemnitzer; President Kennedy; Chief of Staff of the Army, GEN George H. Decker; Chief of Staff of the U.S. Navy, ADM Arleigh A. Burke; and 22nd Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen David M. Shoup. (Photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library And Museum)
Marines and Initial Invasion Planning
ADM Robert L. Dennison served as the commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command from 1960 to 1963. (USN photo)Gen David M. Shoup, the 22nd Commandant of the Marine Corps. (USMC photo)
The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved America’s first Cuba invasion plan in July 1959 following communist revolutionary Fidel Castro’s brutal six-year struggle to remove Fulgencio Batista from power. Designed by a multi-service team of planners in Admiral Robert L. Dennison’s U.S. Atlantic Command, Operation Plan (OPLAN) 312-60 called for a brief air campaign followed by an Army XVIII Airborne Corps’ assault on the Jose Marti and San Antonio de los Banos military airfields south of the capital at Havana. After 19th Air Force transports delivered additional Army ground forces to seize the Port of Havana, the Second Fleet’s Atlantic Amphibious Force would land an armored regiment at Regla inside the port to assist in capturing the capital. Planners later changed the armored regiment’s insertion from sea to air. After toppling Havana, the American ground force would have to clear all remaining pockets of resistance east to the Guantanamo Bay. Planners estimated it would take 30 days to complete the invasion.
The Marine Corps did not participate in OPLAN 312-60 planning and, in the event of an invasion, had no role other than defending the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and providing fixed-wing attack squadrons for air strikes. It is unclear as to why Marines were more or less left out, though the most plausible explanation was President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s open animus toward the Marine Corps and the service’s diminished role in the national defense strategy. With the nuclear triad of missiles, submarines and bombers syphoning off most of Eisenhower’s defense budget beginning in 1953, the Marine Corps endured a more than $40 million budget cut and an end-strength reduction of over 60,000 Marines between 1954 and 1959. The Marine Corps’ 21st Commandant, General Randolph M. Pate, known more for his administrative acumen, overlooked his service’s bloated supporting establishment and deactivated six infantry battalions and six aircraft squadrons in 1959—a more than 30 percent reduction in combat strength—and left the remaining battalions and squadrons to function at 90 percent and 80 percent manning levels. Eisenhower’s misguided policies and Gen Pate’s misplaced priorities kept the Fleet Marine Forces chronically understrength and incapable of supporting contingency plans like OPLAN 312-60.
This 1962 painting by Richard Genders depicts Navy and Marine officers as they plan for the invasion of Cuba. Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command.
The Marine Corps’ scene changed dramatically in 1960 when General David M. Shoup became the 22nd Commandant. Restoring operational readiness as the service’s primary focus, Gen Shoup chose to downsize training and support commands and used a 3,000 Marine end strength increase authorized by newly elected President Kennedy one year later to bring the Fleet Marine Forces back to full capacity. Under Kennedy and Shoup, observed Marine Corps historian Edwin H. Simmons, “technical capabilities had caught up with doctrinal aspirations.” The likelihood that current events would lead the Joint Chiefs to modify the invasion plan were high as were the chances that the Marines would play a part given the changes as a result of Shoup’s operational focus and Kennedy’s defense strategy.
OPLANS 312-61 and 312-61 (Revised)
Newspaper headline from 1960. (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
ADM Alfred G. Ward was the Atlantic Amphibious Fleet commander. (USN photo)Fidel Castro speaks at a rally in Havana, Cuba, 1959. Castro rose to power after a six-year struggle to forcefully remove Fulgencio Batista from office. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
The January 1961 Department of Defense (DOD) study “Evaluation of Possible Military Courses of Action in Cuba,” outlining potential courses of action “in view of increased capabilities of the Cuban Armed Forces and militia” and the Soviet military buildup on Cuba was a clear indication that Marines would have a role in invasion planning and a possible invasion. Specifically, DOD officials included in the study the forces available for an invasion, namely the U.S. Atlantic Fleet’s “two carriers, a Marine Division, and a Marine Air Wing.” When Admiral Dennison reconvened invasion planning in February at the direction of the Joint Chiefs, he invited Fleet Marine Force Atlantic planners to help develop the ground scheme. The resultant OPLAN 312-61 added an amphibious assault by a Marine brigade to seize the Port of Havana.
Concepts derived from Major General Robert E. Hogaboom’s Fleet Marine Force Organization and Composition Boards in 1955 and 1956 offered planners integrated Marine air-ground forces at the expeditionary unit to force level for rapid deployment anywhere in the world by sea and air. With the prospects of a presidential decision to invade Cuba could come with little-to-no notice, the inclusion of fast landing forces, flexible emergency plans, and pre-loaded combat supplies on amphibious ships in contingency were now essential and part of every discussion.
Intelligence gleaned from the botched Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored Cuba invasion by anti-Castro exiles in mid-April 1961 brought Atlantic Command planners back together. Of particular concern were reports of Soviet-made tanks and antiaircraft systems and a Cuban ground force of upwards of 75,000 soldiers. In turn, planners produced OPLAN 312-61 (Revised). Remaining in were the air strikes, airborne assault on the military airfields, seizing Havana, and defeating all Cuban forces between the capital and Guantanamo Bay. The most significant change was an amphibious assault east of Havana and a series of land and sea-based attacks by II Marine Expeditionary Force. The Atlantic Amphibious Fleet commander, Admiral Alfred G. Ward, recalled, “We would plan on where the Marines would land, plan what cruisers would be needed in order to provide gunfire support, and what would be necessary to protect these landings.”
Concerned that President Kennedy might order military action with very little notice, the Joint Chiefs directed ADM Dennison to develop a more synchronized invasion scheme. Although the concept of operations and force composition remained intact, OPLAN 314-61 now had more elaborate time strictures governing force deployments, the air campaign, and the time between the airborne and amphibious assaults. The changes had no impact on II Marine Expeditionary Force’s plan completed during the summer of 1961.
II Marine Expeditionary Force Operations Plan 312-61
LtGen Joseph C. Burger, Commanding General, Fleet Marine Forces Atlantic, 1959 to 1961. Burger also assumed the command of the II Marine Expeditionary Force in June 1961. (USMC photo)
Marine Corps HUS-1 helicopters with HMR-262 take off from USS Boxer, during operations off Vieques Island with the 10th Provisional Marine Brigade, March 8, 1959. (Photo courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command.)
An aerial view of Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, March 1964. (Photo by William C. Reed, USMC)An aerial view of Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, circa 1964. (USMC Photo)
II Marine Expeditionary Force’s involvement coincided with General Shoup’s directive that Fleet Marine Force Atlantic and Pacific headquarters also function as expeditionary force-level command elements during division/wing-level exercises and contingencies. Lieutenant General Joseph C. Burger, in addition to commanding Fleet Marine Forces Atlantic, activated and assumed command of II Marine Expeditionary Force in June 1961. Explaining to Leatherneck that same month that being “prepared to react in the shortest possible notice” was his focus, LtGen Burger oversaw the detailed planning and completion of both Fleet Marine Force Atlantic Operation Plan 100-60 and II MEF Operations Plan 312-61. Burger’s blueprint for keeping 25,000 Marines ready involved quarterly brigade-size amphibious assault exercises on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island with several smaller exercises taking place at Camp Lejeune in between. Doing this kept one third of his units assigned to II Marine Expeditionary Force Operations Plan 312-61 embarked and within a few hours transit time from Cuba.
In the event that President Kennedy ordered an invasion, the II Marine Expeditionary Force owned four major tactical tasks; one within each of OPLAN 314-61’s four phases. In Phase I (Counter the Threat to Guantanamo and Prepare for Offensive Operations) LtGen Burger was responsible for defending the naval station. To do this, the battalion afloat in the Caribbean would land and immediately take up positions the length of the demarcation line separating the naval station from sovereign Cuba. Burger would then fly 2nd Marine Division’s “ready” battalion and a regimental headquarters directly to Guantanamo Bay where it would absorb an armor platoon, an engineer detachment, and an artillery battery deployed from Camp Lejeune as augments to the naval station’s permanent Marine Barracks.
With the 2nd Marine Division (minus those defending the naval station) and 2nd Marine Air Wing’s helicopter squadrons embarked on amphibious ships at Little Creek Amphibious Base near Norfolk, Va., and anchored off Camp Lejeune, N.C., the II MEF deployed to the Caribbean for Phase II (Position for Operations).
Cuba area of operations. (Map designed by Steve Walkowiak)
Once off Cuba, two helicopter squadrons had to relocate to Guantanamo Bay to support 2nd Marine Division elements there. Meanwhile, Marine fixed-wing squadrons transitioned to either aircraft carriers or to the Naval Air Station Key West, Fla., and the Naval Air Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico.
On the order to invade, 2nd Marine Air Wing’s fixed wing squadrons would strike Soviet and Cuban air defense systems and ground forces in and around Havana and near Guantanamo. As a counter to Cuban and Soviet infantry, armor, and mechanized formations defending Havana, planners tasked the Army’s 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions and the 1st Armored Division with landing 10 miles east at Tarara and sweeping southwest and then north into the capital. For this to happen, 2nd Marine Division, in Phase III (Assault Havana Area) and “in coordination with airborne and surface-landing of Army forces,” had to establish a beachhead at Tarara. The division’s two infantry regiments reinforced with engineers and armor and supported by an artillery regiment would then attack west to seize the Morro Castle and the Port of Havana.
During Phase IV (Assault Guantanamo Area) operations, the II Marine Force re-embarked amphibious ships for “assault landing operations” in conjunction with 2nd Marine Division elements attacking west from the Guantanamo Bay. A consolidated II MEF would then attack toward central Cuba and link up with the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps and the 1st Armored Division. Planners assessed that major combat operations would take 60 to 90 days to complete.
President Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs grappled over invading Cuba. The Joint Chiefs’ perspective was that in addition to Castro’s growing military capability and ongoing Soviet military buildup, the failed CIA-sponsored invasion exposed gaps in Cuba’s defenses such that if an invasion were to happen, it should be sooner rather than later. Surprisingly, Gen Shoup disagreed. In his novel “The Best and Brightest,” journalist David Halberstam recalled how Shoup’s primary concern was the size of the invasion force needed to control the island and American casualties. To elaborate, Shoup placed a map of the U.S. on an overhead projector and covered it with a transparent map of Cuba. Drawing attention to Cuba’s vastly smaller size in relation to the U.S., he covered the two maps with a transparency containing a small red dot. When asked what the red dot represented, Shoup explained it was the size of Tarawa before adding, “It took us three days and 18,000 Marines to take it.” Whether or not Shoup influenced Kennedy’s decision is unknown. Talk of an invasion, however, subsided. By the summer of 1962, the U.S. and Soviet Union were once again on the brink of war.
Editor’s note: Read Part II of “U.S. Marines, Cuba, and the Invasion that Never Was,” in the October issue of Leatherneck.
Author’s bio: Dr. Nevgloski is the former director of the Marine Corps History Division. Before becoming the Marine Corps’ history chief in 2019, he was the History Division’s Edwin N. McClellan Research Fellow from 2017 to 2019, and a U.S. Marine from 1989 to 2017.
The U.S. Air Force C-17 began its final descent in preparation for landing. Corporal Von Straight sat packed in among the 25 Marines of his stick. Gear of every sort filled the expansive interior of the aircraft, leaving barely enough room for the Marines, as Straight contemplated the mission ahead. What that mission was he did not fully understand, but it was Afghanistan. After watching Marines fight there for most of his life, Straight yearned to finally have his turn. Would it be a fight, though? Nobody seemed to know. The Marines aboard the plane could never have imagined the world in which they were about to spend the next two weeks.
The aircraft touched down at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in the capital city of Kabul during the early morning hours of Aug. 14, 2021. A few other personnel from 1st Battalion, 8th Marines had arrived earlier, but as a combat engineer, Straight’s squad arrived with the advance party.
Events on the ground outside the airport had decayed rapidly over the weeks prior. The Afghan government and military, propped up by the U.S., collapsed under a Taliban onslaught in every city and province. After vacating Bagram Air Base on July 1, the airfield at HKIA stood as the last American toehold in the country. U.S. soldiers and Marines from Joint Task Force-Crisis Response operated out of HKIA preparing for the possibility of a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO). The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 1/8 attached, and Central Command’s Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force, with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines attached, were called in for support as the situation deteriorated.
As Cpl Straight prepared for the coming evacuation, the entire world watched events happening outside the perimeter wall. On Aug. 15, Taliban forces surrounded Kabul and Afghan President Ashraf Ghazi fled the city with numerous other officials of the American-backed government. Afghan army soldiers threw away their weapons and melted into the civilian populace. Taliban flooded the city and seized control of the country. American helicopters evacuated more than 5,000 personnel still on the ground at the U.S. embassy.
News of the takeover spread quickly, and civilians massed at the airport in fear for their lives. The sudden lack of Afghan soldiers left holes on the airfield perimeter, and crowds seized the opportunity.
Straight was working with his team processing civilian contractors for evacuation as night fell on the 15th when a frantic call suddenly rose over the radio. Someone across the airfield said they were under fire and civilians had breached the perimeter. The Marines joined forces with Turkish soldiers and moved out. Ambient city lights washed out all night vision devices so vehicles trailed the line of Marines pushing over the open ground, illuminating their way.
Sparks jumped off the tarmac in front of Straight. A vehicle-mounted machine gun behind him opened up on a shadowy figure hiding in a ditch. As they continued, a C-17 lumbered through the darkness down the runway. Marines dodged the aircraft and took cover as it throttled up on an emergency takeoff. Farther ahead, a line of black-clad men carrying AK-47s sprinted across the field. By the time the sighting made its way up the chain for permission to engage, the men disappeared into a distant crowd.
Two shots cracked through the air past Straight’s head. He stopped in his tracks. He’d never been shot at before.
“My platoon sergeant standing next to me started dying of laughter as he saw the thought process working through my head,” Straight recalled. “My first thought was that I was not wearing my eye protection, like I was on another damn field exercise at Lejeune or something. We saw the guy who shot at us on the edge of a crowd, but he disappeared. Things just got progressively worse from there.”
A civilian family gives their baby to Marines on the wall at North Gate. Tragically, this desperate act was not isolated or uncommon during the evacuation from HKIA. USMC photo.
When dawn rose on the 16th, just a few hundred Marines and U.S. Army soldiers occupied the airfield amid a rising tide of civilians. Estimates range as high as 24,000 civilians breaching the perimeter. A brief and unintended firefight broke out between Marines and Taliban with two Taliban killed. Air Force airplanes made last-minute emergency takeoffs through the crowds on the runway. At midday, civilians on the ground recorded the now infamous footage of people clinging to the outside of a C-17 and bodies plummeting from the sky as they lost their grip after lifting off. Apache helicopters flew back and forth over the flight line mere feet off the ground, forcing people back with their rotor wash. Nothing worked. The crowd proved largely peaceful but refused to budge.
The swell of people reduced as night fell. No planes would land or take off as long as they remained on the tarmac. Afghan special forces arrived and used extreme crowd control tactics, beatings and shooting civilians who stubbornly refused to retreat. Finally, after more than 24 hours of effort to regain control, U.S. forces reopened the airfield.
Cpl Mike Markland waited in Qatar with the remainder of 1/8 for a flight to Kabul as different news agencies reported the fall of the city to the Taliban. Some Marines were told to prepare for a landing under fire. No one knew what to expect or what was happening on the ground.
As Markland’s C-17 waited for permission to take off, another aircraft landed nearby and stopped on the runway. The aircrew from Markland’s plane exited and ran over. Marines stirred and grumbled over the delay as the C-17 crews gathered around the landing gear of the other plane. Markland eventually learned that the body of an Afghan civilian remained lodged inside the aircraft, crushed beneath the landing gear and frozen solid by the frigid temperatures at high altitude during the flight.
Markland’s plane finally departed and arrived at HKIA on the night of the 16th after the airfield was secure. Upon their arrival, the Marines from 1/8 set up around the north and east gates of the airport to process civilians for evacuation. Markland reached North Gate and climbed above the wall. People were spread out as far as his eyes could see. Strands of concertina wire placed outside the wall lay flat beneath discarded clothes, luggage, and bodies shoved over them.
Marines pushed outside the gate, fighting to create space between the wall and the crowd. They screamed at the top of their lungs for people to get back or sit down. Civilians screamed back at the Marines and at each other, holding aloft every kind of paperwork imaginable that they hoped could get them out of the country. Marines scanned for threats as civilians crushed in, and warning shots filled the air, originating from any nationality present with a rifle. Taliban soldiers lurked along a road running parallel to the wall less than 100 meters away beating and shooting people who didn’t comply with their orders. Afghan army soldiers waded into the crowd outside the gate beating and shooting people for the same reasons.
Marines assigned to the 24th MEU await a flight to Afghanistan at Al Udeied Air Base, Qatar, Aug. 17, 2021.Photo courtesy 1stLt Mark Andries, USMC.
“Nothing in your life gets you ready for something like that,” reflected Markland. “I was immediately met with something so different from anything I ever thought I would encounter; a situation I never even realized could happen with humanity. Everything you’ve learned as a man and as a Marine is constantly being used. It became exhausting very quickly.”
The young Marines knew Afghanistan as a war zone for all of their lives. Many of the older Marines had fought there on previous deployments but were now there under the pretense of an NEO, not combat, and they expected some form of order to make that happen. The chaos that greeted them left everyone looking to each other to determine what was acceptable and what was not.
“We wanted so badly to help these people,” Markland said, “but the only thing messing up the order and regulation of everything was the people. It’s like a two-edged sword. Any time you help one person, everyone sees that, and they get all riled up.”
In one example outside North Gate, Cpl Benjamin Lowther stood shoulder to shoulder with other Marines keeping civilians back. The crowd grew agitated and surged ahead. Warning shots and screaming filled the air. Suddenly, a can of tear gas erupted in the middle of it all. No one knew who threw it—a Marine, ANA soldier, or one of the other nationalities present. Marines withdrew back toward the gate to shut down processing until the crowd settled. As Marines backed away from the gas, civilians pushed ahead into the void, crushing some of their own beneath the weight of an unstoppable mass.
Their momentum pinned Cpl Lowther against a thigh-high jersey barrier. He drew his service pistol and fired into the air but could not create enough space to free his legs. He shouted for help and two Marines grabbed hold of his gear. Pulling at his belt and flak jacket, they finally freed his feet and safely returned behind the gate.
Marines hardened themselves to maintain their sanity. One of the worst duties involved returning “rejected” civilians back outside the gate. With limited guidance from the Department of State (DOS) on what paperwork a civilian needed for evacuation, Marines ushered in people who did not meet the criteria. Other times, foreign nations brought in large groups without proper vetting and left them at the Marines’ entry control point. On one occasion, Cpl Markland helped bring in a man who had been shot in the genitals. They rushed him to medical care, but when he was stabilized, were forced to bring the man back outside the wall because he had no paperwork. Many other men, women, and children were forced back outside. Civilians resisted, begging Marines to let them stay, or pleading for the Marines to kill them. Unbelievably, they deemed this a more merciful death than being thrown out and left once more to the Taliban.
Taken from the U.S. Central Command investigation into the attack at HKIA, this unclassified photo offers a harrowing glimpse into the environment that 2/1 Marines occupied at Abbey Gate shortly after arriving. (DOD photo)
A Marine at HKIA travels on a commandeered bicycle. Having arrived with little more than the gear they carried, Marines adapted and “acquired” any means of transportation available around the airport. (Photo by GySgt Melissa Marnell, USMC)
At the same time as 1/8 occupied North and East gates, 2/1 touched down in waves and moved to Abbey Gate. Unlike a typical combat deployment, the Marines arrived lacking much of the gear that normally came with them. They relied on whatever they could carry, but Marines being Marines, they quickly adapted.
“It’s like if Stephen King and Dr. Seuss got together and wrote a book, that would be all of HKIA,” recalled Gunnery Sergeant Melissa Marnell, a combat photographer attached to 2/1. “It was like the Wild West. Marines were doing anything they could to get by. I saw rifle squads traveling on bicycles, or entire sections moving on bulldozers or fire engines. I had no idea so many Marines knew how to hot-wire vehicles. If you found a vehicle and could get it started, spray paint your name on the side, and it was yours.”
Sergeant Dalton Hannigan served as the assistant team leader for a seven-man sniper team called Reaper 2. He went to work “acquiring” assets. An Army Ranger taught Hannigan how to hot-wire a vehicle, and he picked one out of many scattered around the airport. Now with wheels, the team made their way to the terminal.
Reaper 2 received the task of providing overwatch at Abbey Gate. The team set up in a two-story guard tower presiding over the outer gate and exterior wall of the airport. The position offered a unique perspective. A road led straight out from the gate below, and a high wall rimmed with concertina wire lined one side served as the airport’s outer wall. A shallow canal lined the other side of the road, running directly below the tower and continuing beyond the gate in the opposite direction. A pedestrian walkway ran along the opposite side of the canal with another tall, chain link fence separating the walkway from the rest of the city beyond. In total, less than 50 feet stood between the tower and the fence beyond the canal.
A view from Reaper 2’s sniper tower at Abbey Gate. The Taliban checkpoint at the “chevron” of shipping containers can be seen in the distance on the right side of the photo. (Photo courtesy of SSgt Dalton Hannigan, USMC)
Turmoil enveloped the world within the snipers’ view. A sea of people pressed toward Abbey Gate from up and down the canal. Other Marines from 2/1 held the ground outside, struggling to keep the peace. The canal proved to be an open sewer, and the Marines nicknamed it “shit creek.” The smells of feces, urine, blood and decaying bodies rose into the tower, creating a toxic and intolerable environment around the gate, but the filth and stench failed to dissuade civilians. They waded through the knee-high water up to the side nearest the gate. Marines stood on the wall preventing some from climbing out and helping up others who showed appropriate documents.
Less than 200 yards down the road, a bridge spanned the canal, leading out of the airport toward the Baron Hotel. The British set up their base of operations there, processing people for evacuation. Maintaining the path of entry and exit for the Brits was critical.
Marines worked for hours clearing the road in front of Abbey Gate. The sheer weight of the desperate crowd seemed impossible to push back. After nearly 24 hours, 2/1 finally cleared the road out to the bridge over the canal. Engineers hauled in large shipping containers and placed them in a chevron-shape at the bridge, blocking vehicle entry to the gate.
The chevron morphed into one of the great incongruities representing those ending days of the war in Afghanistan. Taliban soldiers, operating in partnership with U.S. forces, occupied the chevron as an outer checkpoint. Their armed presence at this blocking position prevented the possibility of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) from reaching Abbey Gate. In theory, the Taliban also provided an initial screening of civilians for evacuation. To the Marines of Reaper 2 observing the Taliban from their sniper tower, reality appeared quite different.
“We saw people getting beaten and executed, but there was nothing we could do,” remembered Sgt Hannigan. “At different points, we’d see the Taliban sit down on the shipping containers and grab a couple kids and the kids would just sit up there with them. What the Taliban were doing with their families I don’t know. But it was just weird seeing a toddler holding their baby brother or sister, sitting up there in the heat alone with the Taliban.”
Random shootings at the chevron drove civilians into the canal, where they bypassed the Taliban checkpoint. The Taliban presence left everyone on edge although the crowd remained mostly peaceful.
Marines arriving at Abbey Gate found themselves in a position no training could prepare them for. DOS officials appeared sporadically and in short intervals over the first several days. They alone made the determination on “acceptable” documentation for evacuation. They operated inside the gate, however, and Marines outside acted independently to determine who should be let in. Every Marine recognized an American passport or green card and identified those rare individuals to be let in but what does a German work visa look like? Or an Australian visa? What if a civilian handed you a cellphone and an English-speaking voice on the other end claimed to be a congressman or a colonel or someone else “important” enough to vouch for the person who handed you the phone?
Complicating matters, guidance on acceptable documentation shifted constantly. Just like 1/8 experienced at North Gate, 2/1 Marines grew frustrated and exhausted as they processed civilians through to safety, only then to discover the papers they possessed were unacceptable. Hundreds of civilians fit inside the inner holding area at Abbey Gate awaiting DOS approval. Sometimes, more than 2/3 of these groups were forced back out.
Desperation grew as time passed. Families stood on the road or in the canal for days. Many succumbed to thirst and heat exhaustion. Whenever DOS personnel left or the airfield shut down flight operations, processing halted. The crowd grew agitated and teetered on the brink of rioting. Marines witnessed unimaginable scenes as men, women, and children trampled each other to death, were crushed against concrete barriers, or were left for dead in the canal.
Marines clung to a sense of decency. They wanted to help but felt incapable in the wake of so much terror and tragedy. Even so, opportunities arose. Without clear guidance, young Marines acted independently, making decisions that meant life or death for people outside the gate.
“The first couple days I was looking around to see everybody else’s reaction, or to see how they handled things, but eventually I realized it doesn’t come down to me asking somebody if I can do something if it’s going to help,” said Cpl Markland. “It came down to understanding that right now, no decision is the worst decision for these people.”
A Marine with 2/1 holds a baby that had been entrusted to the Marines at Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021. (Photo by GySgt Melissa Marnell, USMC)
The Marines of Reaper 2. Top row: Sgt Andrew Valencia, left, and Cpl Adam Santos. Bottom row, left to right: Sgt Charles Shilling, Sgt Dalton Hannigan, HM3 Jorge Mayo, Sgt Tyler Vargas-Andrews, LCpl Caden Coop. Courtesy of SSgt Dalton Hannigan, USMC.
Markland found a distraught family at North Gate one day, just after they made it through the initial screening. The family of five entered HKIA, prepared to leave their entire lives behind with a single blue backpack. It contained all their money, documents, and whatever other possessions they could fit inside. Somehow, the backpack disappeared. The frantic mother approached Markland with broken English, explaining their bag went missing during the initial search. As Marines held the family off to the side, Markland backtracked into the holding area looking for the bag. He spotted a blue bag in the crowd, but another civilian claimed it. Markland finally gave up and returned. The mother begged Markland to take her with him to search a second time.
He knew the uncleared civilians presented a security risk and taking her back through the entrance created a problem for everyone else trying to get in. He also understood that without the backpack, the family would not have the required documents and would be kicked out. He took the risk. They walked 100 yards back towards the gate. The woman immediately identified her bag as the one Markland had noticed before and retrieved it from the other civilian, who offered no resistance. They returned to the rest of the family, who wept with joy and thanked Markland for his help.
At another point near North Gate, Cpl Straight received the task of guarding an Afghan interpreter named Reggie. Reggie served with U.S. forces as an interpreter in 2012, then immigrated to the U.S. and enlisted in the Marines. After serving his time on active duty, he returned to Afghanistan as an interpreter once more. Now, Reggie sought evacuation to the U.S., and Straight helped him search the crowds for his wife and children. Miraculously, they found Reggie’s family and got them on a plane.
In the personnel terminal, GySgt Marnell learned firsthand how the smallest of gestures meant the world to the civilians. She found a refrigerator full of water bottles and took several out to a crowd waiting to board their plane. After enduring the heat with no food or water for days, the people beamed with gratitude. Marnell and one of her Marines made trip after trip, emptying the fridge for the people outside.
“I’ve never seen someone so thankful for something so minor in my life,” she remembered. “That was the one time I was happy over there, doing something so small for those people.”
Female Marines from across the commands present at HKIA formed Female Engagement Teams. These Marines performed a critical function, and endured much emotional hardship in their roles processing women and children for evacuation. Courtesy SSgt Victor Mancilla, USMC.
This screenshot from Cpl Mike Markland’s GoPro video depicts the gratitude a family showed to Markland after he helped them find their blue backpack at North Gate. Without the backpack, and the documents inside, the family would have been rejected for evacuation by the Department of State. Photo courtesy of Cpl Mike Markland, USMC.
Of all the Marines immersed in the good and the bad playing out at HKIA, the Female Engagement Teams (FETs) held a unique role. Afghan culture dictated women and children could only be handled by females. Female Marines across the commands on deck formed together to support processing operations. The significant number of women and children present and the limited number of female Marines available required the FETs to work non-stop.
“They were being worked to a degree where they didn’t have any down time,” said Markland. “We at least changed between the gate, the airfield perimeter, and rest. They didn’t have that as much, it was just gate to gate to gate. And the things they were being used for, with the women and kids, was very emotionally draining.”
Some of the most widely publicized photos to come out of HKIA featured FET members caring for babies. Many desperate families handed their babies to Marines over the gates or left them lying outside where they knew Marines would rescue them, just to give the kids a chance at life. An orphanage was formed on the airfield to care for and protect all the children separated from their parents. Marines cherished the moments playing with all the kids, while wrestling inside with the terrifying reality surrounding them.
Marnell waited with three young girls for their flight out of HKIA. The girls and their parents were cleared and approved for evacuation, but the youngest of them was still unaware of their circumstances. The girl, only 4 or 5 years old, pulled off her bracelets and handed them to Marnell.
“You can have these,” the girl said. “I won’t need them when the Taliban kill me.”
Marnell stared, taken off guard. How could this be the thought of a 5-year-old? She noticed the girls all wore a cross on a necklace. She learned the girls’ parents were English teachers at a school. Marnell reassured the girls they were safe now, held them, and stayed with them until they boarded their flight.
As days passed, units at the gates adopted rest plans to finally relive those who had been on guard for days. Many Marines endured 72 hours or more without sleep. They cycled back for rest and witnessed some results of their work; C-17s loaded with civilians taking off.
By Aug. 25, the situation declined from bad to worse. The President’s deadline to withdraw from HKIA by Aug. 31 approached and the crowds understood their chances of evacuation diminished rapidly. Their desperation increased proportionally. Marines felt the pressure, not just from the crowd surrounding the airport, but from desperate people around the world. An avalanche of “special requests” overwhelmed the Marines. Thousands upon thousands arrived in every way imaginable; from the White House to the Vatican, from congressmen to retired colonels, foreign officials, or anyone with someone they knew still outside the airport. The senior officers at HKIA received emails from the highest levels of government. Lance corporals at the gates who still had working phones found their numbers somehow had gotten out, and they received texts or phone calls about specific people to look for in the crowd. Sometimes the special requests helped identify individuals in the sea of people. More often than not, the special requests, and corresponding efforts to act on them served only to disrupt or even cripple the mass evacuation efforts.
Credible threat streams reached the intelligence community. VBIEDs threatened North Gate with the civilian road running parallel to the wall. Suicide vest IEDs (SVIEDS) were suspected as well with detailed descriptions of bags and people to watch out for. The threat at North and East Gates increased so dramatically that both entrances permanently closed operations. Abbey Gate remained the only operational entrance for civilians to enter. By nightfall on Aug. 25, commanders decided to also close Abbey Gate for good.
GySgt Melissa Marnell stayed with these three sisters as they awaited evacuation from HKIA. Visible on Marnell’s right wrist are the bracelets given to her by the youngest of the girls. Photo courtesy of Sgt Benjamin Aulick, USMC.
Cpl Straight arrived at Abbey Gate the morning of Aug. 26 with the task of barricading the gate once Marines from 2/1 pulled back inside. The morning wore on and operations continued as normal, but no word came to shut it down. Straight asked around about the delay. The Brits continued operating out of the Baron Hotel with the road from Abbey Gate as their only means of reaching the airport. Until they ceased processing civilians, the Marines needed to keep Abbey Gate open.
The closure of North and East Gates forced an influx of people toward Abbey. Civilians filled the canal and walkway. The frustrated crowd boiled over, throwing trash left on the ground, and grabbing at the Marines’ gear. Marines used flash bangs and other crowd control measures but found little success. Some Marines witnessed one man hold a baby over his head as a tiny human shield when a flash bang exploded nearby. Other civilians threw their children at the wall in a last hopeless act.
“Moms were trying to give away their kids. They would throw the kids to us,” stated one Marine in an interview from Central Command’s declassified investigation into the attack at Abbey Gate. “We didn’t have a choice then because the kids would be hurt. You’d be surprised how many people threw babies. You have no idea.”
“They would throw the kids over the fence, hitting the ground,” stated another Marine in the investigation. “Throwing like baseballs. It was crazy.”
IED threats poured in, adding to the mayhem. Marines were told to look for a black backpack with white arrows, but bags and suitcases littered the entire area. Intel provided a full description of a clean-shaven man as a possible suicide bomber. Snipers from Reaper 2 spotted a man matching the description in the crowd and reported the sighting. Other Marines spotted suspicious individuals acting far too calm amid the chaos, observing the gate and taking pictures.
Several reports of an imminent attack arrived throughout the day. On at least one occasion, an incredibly specific IED report arrived with a countdown. Marines received the warning with 10 minutes until detonation, then reiterated at five minutes. Snipers in the tower took shelter and the search platoon outside the gate knelt behind a concrete barrier. Everyone remained sheltered well beyond the expired timeline before resuming operations. The substantial increase in threats led the Marines to collapse back from the road leading to the chevron and hold a small perimeter around the outer gate.
First Platoon from Golf Company, 2/1, assumed duty outside the gate, lining the canal wall directly below the sniper tower. Three FET members exited the gate helping to pull women and children from the canal. A U.S. Army psychological operations (PSYOPS) vehicle arrived at the gate to assist with crowd control. One official estimate placed 2,000 to 3,000 civilians at Abbey Gate. At around 5:40 p.m., roughly 30 minutes after the PSYOPS team arrived, a bomb detonated.
The suicide bomber stood on the opposite side of the canal, directly across from the Marines. The explosion immediately killed or wounded hundreds of people packed into the area beneath the sniper tower. Tear gas canisters held by Marines closest to the blast ruptured, spreading their contents in a cloud over the scene. Screaming civilians fled the area along the canal. Bodies piled against the canal wall, blocking their path and restricting escape.
Cpl Straight stood inside the gate nearly 200 feet away. Even at that distance, the blast wave knocked him off his feet. Sgt Hannigan had just returned to the sniper tower and parked his truck inside the gate less than 100 feet away. He immediately climbed up the tower and found several of his Marines dazed and concussed. He learned one team member, Sgt Tyler Vargas-Andrews, was wounded on the ground outside.
One of numerous Air Force C-17s packed with civilians for evacuation out of Afghanistan. Some of these massive aircraft took off with nearly 650 people aboard. Photo courtesy of 62nd Airlift Wing, USAF.
Encounters with children at HKIA are some of the best memories, as well as some of the most painful, for many veterans who served there. The children displayed resilience and courage through the chaos and, for many, separation from their families. They profoundly impacted the Marines who looked after them. Photo courtesy of Sgt Samuel Ruiz, USMC.
Photo courtesy of Sgt Samuel Ruiz, USMC.
Marines sprinted from every direction toward the unfolding mayhem. Some assumed security positions, expecting a complex ambush or follow up IED. Gunfire filled the air after the blast. Several Marines interviewed for the CENTCOM investigation reported armed men in a building on the opposite side of the canal. Others witnessed men on their cellphones or taking pictures.
In the sniper tower, Sgt Hannigan ducked as three rounds struck a window facing the canal. The bulletproof glass splintered but stopped the incoming fire. Marines outside on the ground opened fire briefly, some at perceived targets, others blasting warning shots into the air to keep people back from the casualty evacuation efforts.
Marines grabbed stretchers, riot shields, and anything else that could carry the wounded. Navy corpsmen and Marines applied tourniquets and plugged puncture wounds with their fingers. The number of civilians, dead, alive, and wounded, piled up or running for their lives, complicated all efforts to help. The individual decisions of Marines on the ground remained the only thing holding the situation together.
A chain link fence separated the majority of the casualties from the Marines attempting their rescue. Thinking quickly, Reaper 2 team leader, Sgt Charles Schilling, grabbed a pair of bolt cutters and cut a hole in the fence. This single action dramatically reduced the time it took to reach the wounded.
Sgt Jonathan Painter received shrapnel wounds from the explosion but overcame the chaos and pain to set his squad in a security position along the canal before running into the tear gas to help evacuate the wounded. Cpl Wyatt Wilson was blown through the air with ball bearings peppering his entire body. Somehow, in spite of his own grievous injuries and the cloud of tear gas enveloping him, Wilson found another critically wounded Marine lying nearby and dragged him to safety until blood loss prevented him from going farther. Wilson passed the Marine off but refused care for his own life-threatening wounds. Numerous other Marines, corpsmen, and Army medics put themselves at risk to help their brothers and sisters, as well as the wounded civilians.
As of this writing, the majority of them have gone unrecognized. Sgt Schilling’s life-saving initiative making the hole in the fence is just one example of unrecognized actions. Sgt Painter received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with combat “V.” Cpl Wilson received a Bronze Star with combat “V.”
In less than 15 minutes, all American casualties, both dead and wounded, were evacuated to the initial casualty collection point. Medical facilities at HKIA overflowed. Aircraft departed with the most severely wounded. The rapid evacuation of casualties no doubt prevented more Americans from losing their lives. In fact, it happened so quickly that those responsible for patient tracking struggled to keep up, temporarily misidentifying some of the dead or wounded. In total, the explosion killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and initially wounded close to 30. This number grew in the following weeks as concussions and traumatic brain injuries connected to the blast were identified. More than 150 Afghan civilians died in the attack with an untold number wounded.
The Marines of 1st Platoon, Golf Company, 2/1, on Aug. 26, 2021, immediately prior to taking over responsibilities as the search platoon outside Abbey Gate. Many of the Marines in this photo were among the killed or wounded in the attack that day. Photo courtesy of GySgt Melissa Marnell, USMC.
Following the evacuation, Abbey Gate fell eerily quiet. The civilian crowd disappeared, leaving stacks of bodies piled against the canal wall or floating in the water. The ground attack alarm blared from speakers across HKIA, providing the only background noise. Taliban soldiers remained at the chevron, where they observed and filmed the attack in silence. Engineers blockaded the gate. From then on, apart from special requests, evacuation operations ceased.
On the morning of Aug. 27, explosive ordnance disposal Marines conducted a post-blast analysis. They concluded the bomber utilized a suicide vest or backpack containing 20 pounds of explosives and hundreds of ball bearings. He detonated the device from the canal wall opposite the Marines outside the gate, only 20 feet away.
At noon, U.S. servicemembers gathered on the runway at the ramp of a C-17. One by one, pallbearers escorted 13 flag-draped caskets onto the aircraft. The lives claimed by the attack ranked as one of the highest numbers of U.S. fatalities in a single incident from the entire 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Marines spent the final days before the Aug. 31 deadline preparing to leave. Many engaged in the “demilitarization” of the airport. The intent was to deny the Taliban use of any military equipment. Hundreds of vehicles, aircraft, weapons, computers, radios, and every other type of gear imaginable would be left at HKIA. Commanders tasked the Marine and U.S. Army units with destroying all of it. Marines dropped thermite grenades through engine blocks, slashed tires, and smashed control panels to pieces. Sledgehammers, halligan bars, axes, and anything else they could find replaced rifles as their chosen weapons of opportunity. However, the “demil” order originated, the expectation of what should be destroyed swiftly expanded in its translation down to those carrying it out. At the gates, Marines were often left on their own to make life and death decisions for civilians. Now, throughout the airport, Marines were left on their own to decide what items warranted destruction.
The unclassified photo above from the investigation into the attack at Abbey Gate shows the vantage point of the suicide bomber who attacked Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021. DOD photo.
The photo imposed over the graphic above shows the Marines and civilian crowd packed into the area surrounding the bomber approximately 10 minutes before the blast occurred. The graphic (above) created from a screenshot of drone footage over Abbey Gate immediately after the attack, depicts casualty locations in relation to the blast. Blue dots represent killed in action. Yellow represent wounded. DOD photo.
“The Turkish military left their barracks, and we were standing in their living quarters,” remembered Cpl Markland. “We just thought OK, if we aren’t going to be here to use it, then certainly not the Taliban. We were going to do everything we could to make it uninhabitable for them. We were going to take away the amenities that anyone would appreciate.”
Marines smashed TVs and refrigerators. They broke apart tables and chairs. They forced open every locked door and demolished anything found on the other side. Across the airport, Marines everywhere unleashed nearly two weeks of pent-up anxiety and aggression. They felt helpless in the face of ongoing horror outside the gates. They thirsted for revenge in the wake of the attack that killed 13 of their brothers and sisters. Every window begged to be smashed. Every blank wall space looked naked without “F–K ISIS” in spray paint. Before them lay an entire base full of cathartic opportunity.
HKIA reserved a final bad memory for many Marines. In their last hours on the ground, Marines were ordered to police call the airport and clean up the destruction just completed. They were told that they took the order too far. They returned to specific areas to pick up the pieces and flip vehicles back onto shredded tires. Some unlucky few were stuck policing the areas where civilians waited in groups to board aircraft. Without adequate facilities, civilians defecated in whatever container they had or directly on the ground. Trash and filth of every kind imaginable remained. The police call seemed a fitting end to their time in Afghanistan.
Two Marines help a wounded civilian to safety following the attack at Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021. Photo courtesy of GySgt Melissa Marnell, USMC.
An injured civilian at North Gate is carried to medical treatment on a ladder, the only suitable object available at the time. Throughout the evacuation at HKIA, and especially in the wake of the attack at Abbey Gate, litters proved in short supply and Marines evacuated casualties on ladders, riot shields, and anything else that could serve the purpose. Photo courtesy of Cpl Mike Markland, USMC.
The final American aircraft lifted out of HKIA before midnight on Aug. 30, completing the largest NEO airlift in U.S. history. Officially known as Operation Allies Refuge (OAR), 800 military or civilian aircraft evacuated nearly 125,000 civilians over a 17-day period.
The impressive numbers did little to assuage the feelings of the Marines who endured HKIA. Now two years later, the memories are ever-present, and reminders are constant. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, the Reaper 2 team member severely wounded by the blast, gave a compelling testimony before Congress in March, highlighting the questions and concerns about the operation echoed by many Marines. As recently as April, the Taliban announced they killed one of the key ISIS-K players who planned the bombing at Abbey gate.
In August 2022, on the one-year anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate, Cpl Joe Laude worked through the contact list on his phone, checking in with everyone he knew from HKIA. Laude served as a machine-gunner with Echo Co, 2/1, working at Abbey Gate and rushing 100 meters to the scene of the attack to evacuate casualties after the bomb went off. An idea arose; rather than contacting everyone individually, what if he created a hub where everyone could come for community when they needed it?
“At that one-year anniversary, I already knew OAR veterans had a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of guilt and shame about their service,” Laude said. “I needed to do something.”
He formulated a plan and worked with others to develop the idea. The group founded a 501(c)(3) called OAR Foundation with the mission to provide a community for OAR veterans, preserve the history of the evacuation, and explore the operation’s “moral injury” on those who were there.
“Moral injury is a guilt or shame-based ailment,” Laude explained. “It can be co-occuring with post-traumatic stress, but I think the biggest difference is the guilt. I think many times, the guilt is what can more quickly lead someone toward suicide. We are slowly researching all of these things and recently brought on a psychologist into the organization to help us build up that research.”
U.S. soldiers and Marines carry the body of a fallen servicemember to a waiting aircraft for transport home on Aug. 27, 2021. (Photo by 1stLt Mark Andries, USMC)
As the vast majority of OAR veterans leave the Corps or move on to different commands, they try to decipher how that horror-packed two weeks will fit into the rest of their lives. Even for veterans with combat deployments prior to August 2021, HKIA held experiences unlike anything they had ever seen before. OAR Foundation hopes to play a key role in finding answers and accountability, while providing a forum for veterans to share their experience. As they forge ahead, those stories will shape the legacy of the Marines and Navy corpsmen whose lives were changed at HKIA and preserve the memories of the 13 servicemembers killed in action.
The lessons learned from this tragedy remain in infancy, even two years later. Most will only be revealed as more truth comes to light. When something horrific occurs, the duality of man emerges. The evacuation of HKIA brought out the worst that humanity has to offer. It also brought out the best. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how completely evil holds the day, there will always be someone willing to act for good, even in the face of chaos and utter exhaustion. Someone will always be willing to hold the line. At HKIA, Marines held.
Author’s note: Our tribute to the fallen servicemembers from HKIA is on page 72 of this month’s issue. For the Marines who served at HKIA, thank you for allowing me to share a glimpse into your experience. Each of you has a story worth telling. I encourage you to do so. It would be impossible to capture everything that happened there in one article. I hope my efforts have done you justice. For more information on OAR Foundation, visit www.operationalliesrefugefoundation.org. For additional photos and information about HKIA and the attack at Abbey Gate, see the expanded version of this story at www.mca-marines.org/magazines/leatherneck/.
Most Marines know that the fabric of our Corps is woven from throughout the nation. Marines join from every state and even from foreign countries, often with the goal of becoming a citizen of the United States. But a Canadian citizen who enlists during the Vietnam War with no desire to renounce his Canadian citizenship and become an American? That’s pretty unusual, but even more rare is when that same Marine goes on to become a highly successful businessman and philanthropist. Veteran Marine, successful businessman, and generous philanthropist Terrance K. “Terry” Salman is such a rarity.
Salman recently sat down for an interview with Leatherneck to discuss his service and his focus on philanthropy after his highly successful business career in Canada. Decades after his time in the Corps ended, Salman remains a loyal Leatherneck reader and even referenced two of the magazine’s articles in his recently published book, “What We Give From Marine to Philanthropist: A Memoir.” The interview took place via Zoom which made it easy to see that Salman embodies the old adage, “Once a Marine, always a Marine.” Behind his desk is a large portrait of a Marine waving the American flag, painted by famous Canadian artist, Attila Richard Lukas. It’s clear that Salman is proud to be a Marine.
Canadian by Birth
Growing up in a large family in Quebec, Canada, Terry Salman was a relatively mediocre high school student whose future wasn’t clearly defined. Meeting a Marine recruiter over the border in Platsburg, N.Y., Salman was intrigued listening to all the benefits of service, especially travel, but it was a photo behind the recruiter’s desk that actually sealed the deal. “I had a fondness for JFK [John F. Kennedy], the commander in chief, and behind the recruiter’s desk was a portrait of the commander in chief.” At that time, his only knowledge of the Corps came from reading the Leon Uris classic, “Battle Cry.” Nevertheless, Salman decided the Marine Corps was for him. The recruiter expedited the required green card, and Salman was off to recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.
Salman said “The DIs were very suspicious,” about his citizenship but added that it was only at Parris Island that being a Canadian was ever an issue during his time in the Corps. “I was happy in the Marine Corps. They didn’t really care if I was Canadian. It never came up after boot camp.” And like many Marines, Salman considers his best day in the Corps to be the day he graduated from recruit training at MCRD Parris Island.
The Marines of 1st Bn, 4th Marines (above) in Chu Lai, Vietnam, in August 1965. Salman (below) was a lance corporal at the time. Courtesy of Terry Salman.
Terry Salman as a Lance Corporal. Photo courtesy of Terry Salman.
Vietnam
Salman was assigned to the infantry during his six years in the Marine Corps and he quickly advanced through the ranks to the grade of sergeant. He served in Vietnam with 1st Battalion, 4th Marines as a section leader. “I was an 0341, 81 mm mortars,” said Salman. “What mortars have to do to support a platoon is incredibly important and takes a lot of planning and training.” He later took the lessons he learned from his time as a grunt and applied them to both his business endeavors and philanthropy. “Keep your focus on the ultimate objective which the Marine Corps focuses on, whether a combat mission or training a unit or how to train individuals to become a better Marine. Teamwork is incredibly important.”
When asked about the impact his service in Vietnam had on him, Salman responded positively. “It gave me a much different view. I’ve tried to take a worldly view about what is right and what is wrong, that different countries have different ways of looking at things. Having lived in the United States, everybody called it Camelot, it was a high standard. Things are different today, not only in the United States but elsewhere. There’s more political uncertainty than there was in my time.”
Entering the Business World
After leaving the Marine Corps, Salman returned to Canada and began working in the mining industry with a focus on finance. He achieved significant success at Nesbitt Thompson, a Canadian stock brokerage firm, and later at his own financial advisory firm, Salman Partners, where he was president and chief executive officer and where he raised funding for hundreds of companies in the mining and exploration fields. As the current president of Salman Capital and chairman of New Pacific Metals Corporation, Salman’s business successes have been numerous, and he credits his time in the Corps for setting him on the path to success.
“It was really the foundation of my life because the Marines taught me everything was possible. You just have to be patient. You have to work at it. The guiding principles of following procedures, having a good plan, your own plan, your unit’s plan, those are things that I learned from and used.” Salman referenced other lessons from the Corps including discipline, accountability and responsibility. “The many courses I attended in the Marine Corps helped me become sergeant in less than four years. They were incredibly helpful; they taught me a lot about what it takes to persevere, to look for higher goals.”
Salman, pictured here at the Britannia Mine Museum in 2018, was the honorary chairman of the museum’s fundraising project. His father worked as a mining engineer in the Britannia mines. Salman attributes his philanthropic success to the core values he learned as a Marine. Photo courtesy of Terry Salman.
Philanthropy
His philanthropic efforts grew in parallel to his business successes. According to Salman, philanthropy went hand in hand with his service as a Marine. “Philanthropy is not much different. Some of the core values that Marines learn apply in philanthropy. Marines taught me to help people, and philanthropy is all about helping mankind in a broad sense. I don’t see much difference.”
Veterans’ causes are just one of the many efforts upon which Salman has focused over the years. The Canadian organization, Veterans Transition Network, is especially close to his heart. The organization provides post-traumatic stress treatment to Canadian veterans and American veterans who live in Canada. Encountering one recipient of the organization’s programs and support, Salman was reminded again of the impact of helping others. The veteran told him, “They saved my life. I wouldn’t have seen my daughter graduate without them.” Salman strongly believes that for those who have been blessed with health or a good job, the challenge is to do more. “Veterans are the most marginalized in society in many ways. They suffer from so many things, including a large portion of homelessness, which is a big North American and global crisis to be honest. There’s much more to do.”
Of the many ways Salman has given back, his support of those with AIDS at a time when many shunned them was perhaps most impactful. “When you saw people who had marks on their face and losing weight, I was at the forefront of a hospital that embraced them which was so enriching to see. In those days they were the most marginalized/ostracized people, everyone saw it as a gay man’s disease but of course, it wasn’t. It was uplifting to sit in an environment where you could do something.” According to Salman, his support of those suffering what was at the time an incurable disease is one of his greatest legacies, and again, his efforts to support that particular community also had some roots back to his time in the Corps.
“Philanthropy is about trying to overcome adversity; making the world a better place, more giving, more inclusive, and ironically, I learned that from the Marines—inclusion. We could be supportive in other ways. I learned not to turn my back on people who were different than me. That’s what enabled me to take the AIDS initiative, which was so important.”
Loyalty is vastly important to Salman and is a theme throughout “What We Give.” “That came from my time in the Marine Corps. The Marines are big on loyalty. That’s what Semper Fi is all about. I never forgot that.” He continued, “One of the frustrations I have, not so much in philanthropy but in business, is getting the same kind of loyalty. Six years in the Marine Corps today would seem like an eternity to a young person. That’s a big thing with me.”
From the left: Christina Castell, the chief librarian at the Vancouver Public Library; Terry Salman; and Jenny Marsh, stand with the new electric BiblioBike in 2022. Salman’s work has raised millions of dollars for many organizations like public libraries and hospitals. Courtesy of Terry Salman.
Legacy
Like all good Marines, Salman has spent most of his life serving as an example to others. In addition to his philanthropic efforts, which include raising millions for everything from public libraries to hospitals, Salman wrote, “What We Give From Marine To Philanthropist: A Memoir,” in the hopes that his story would serve as inspiration. “The world is full of tragic stories and suffering people. So, for those of us who have the opportunity to give back, it just seems like the moral thing to do.”
He continues to look for opportunities to help others even today. “Giving back gets easier … it has such rewarding characteristics. Small things go a long way. I’m always looking for new ways to help move my philanthropy forward.” And when asked to describe his legacy, Salman again focused on serving others. “I would hope that they would think about not just about how much money I made, helping to create a better world in the charities and philanthropies that I engaged with. There’s more things to do. That’s what I’m looking forward to for the rest of my life; trying to do more, like the Marines do with less.”
Author’s note: More information on “What We Give From Marine to Philanthropist: A Memoir” and how it can be purchased can be found at www.whatwegivebook.com.
Author’s bio: Col Mary H. Reinwald, USMC (Ret) served 27 years on active duty and retired in 2014. She was the editor of Leatherneck and the vice president for strategic communication for the Marine Corps Association until earlier this year.
