Posted on May 7, 2004 NAS Gosport
By Larry W. Kachelhofer
Last week about 18 former Marines from Companies B and C, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division gathered at Ramada Inn Bayfront in Pensacola to spend a few days together. This same group of friends was storming the beach at Guadalcanal nearly 62 years ago.
From Aug. 7, 1942, to Feb. 7, 1943, these Marines fought to break the Japanese control of the Pacific route to Australia.
Companies B and C traveled to the Solomon Islands aboard the USS Barnett (AP-11, later APA-5), but many of the men of the two companies never met until recent years.
"There were two islands we landed on-Guadalcanal was unopposed," Frank Ashbaugh said.
"The other island was Tulagi. They fought the Japanese for about three days and secured the island. They were building an airfield when we landed." That airfield was later known as Henderson Field, named after a Marine Corps captain.
Then Pfc. Ed Foley, a Marine with C Company, said their first firefight was Aug. 8. "Oscar Grover was the first Marine casuality and Jim Crotty was the first wounded," Foley said. "Lt. Bob Fowlei (killed on Okinawa the last day of the war), platoon lieutenant for our machine gun squad, told me to stay with the dead and wounded. He said someone would be by in 20 minutes to get them. He never came back."
Foley said he finally flipped a mental coin to pick a direction to walk toward. He began walking and said he found a cable. He followed it for about three miles. He said he heard voices from over the next hill, so he stopped to listen. At first he thought they were Japanese, but as he crept closer he realized he was hearing English.
Foley said he stood up, raised his hands and began to call out. He was eventually admitted to the camp, told his story and was sent back with some more Marines to retrieve the dead and wounded.
Foley's 21st birthday was Aug. 11, 1942. He was in sick bay because of one of the many illnesses the Marines were contracting in the jungle.
On the night of Aug. 10 he said he kept asking two Marines, "What time is it?" He was waiting for midnight so he would know he was officially 21 years old-and one of the "older" Marines on the island.
He said the two Marines he kept asking, "What time is it?" were released the next day. He said 20 minutes later someone came in and told him those two Marines had just been killed. "Death was all around. You never knew when it would happen."
Foley said he weighed 185 pounds when he arrived on Guadalcanal-he weighed 116 pounds when he left a few months later.
Ashbaugh said in their first fight, the Battle of Tenaru, "3,500 Japanese came down and tried to whip 20,000 Marines and it wouldn't work."
Out of those 3,500 Japanese soldiers, the only survivor was their leader, Col. Kyono Ichiki. Ashbaugh said, "He (Ichiki) went into the woods with his kimono, knelt down on his mat and committed hara-kiri.
"The next time (after Tenaru), they came down with 10,000 and that didn't work and they later came down with 10,000 more," Ashbaugh said.
"All total, the Japanese lost 29,000 and the Marines lost 1,900. If they had brought all of them down at one time it would have been a different story."
B Company and C Company have been meeting for 14 years, but this is the first time the two units combined their reunions.
Over the decades their hair has turned gray or become thinner, but they're still Marines. As several of them repeated, "Once a Marine, always a Marine."
And throughout the reunion days, there was no end of stories, each man remembering their situation as well as the situation of the man on their right and the man on their left.
"Each year you hear a different story," Ashbaugh said
This story was published in the Navy Air Station base Newspaper, GOSPORT, on May 7, and it was written by a former U.S. Marine. It was sent to me from John Gunn, Colonel, USMC - retired - Email: gunns@bellsouth.net
