[dragoon500ly]

It always surprises me just how ignorant some of the military officers that I work with simply don't have any intrest in military history. Now, to be fair, the vast majority of officers do have a deep intrest in military history and are ready to agure at the drop of a hat the merits of line vs. column in the Napoleonic Wars. But I'm seeing a distrubing percentage of officers, that just don't take the time to understand how the mistakes of the past can teach you about today's actions.

One naval lieutenant, who shall remain nameless, got into an arguement with me over Guadalcanal, and how the Army needlessly prolonged the fighting....WTF, over? This officer also maintained that the Navy did everthing possible to insure that the Marines were well supplied. Hence this little article.

When the 1st Marine Division was first sent to New Zealand, the marines executed the move as an administrative move from one base to another. One result of this was that the cargo ships were commercially loaded, Basically all equipment was broken down as far as possible, crated and then loaded, cramming the most material possible into the hull. This also meant that the division was not in a position to make an amphibious landing. The division would have to unload its equipment, and reassemble and repack it and then combat load the transports. Colonel Hunt perhaps said it best, "the essence of combat loading is not to load the toilet paper on top of the ammunition." Hampering the marines was the limited port facilities of Wellington (at the time). The Aotea quay only had space for five freighters, for example.

The Division D-4, Colonel Pate calculated that there would not be enough cargo space available to transport all of the division's equipment and supplies. Each man would only be allowed to take what was needed to actually live and fight. All excess clothing, bedding rolls and company property would be stored in Wellington. Nonessential units or elements of units would also be left behind, as well as 75% of the division's heavy vehicles. Supply stocks were slimmed down from the prescribed 90 days to 60 days worth. And the division's ammunition reserves were pared down to only 10 units of fire.

Each cargo ship was assigned a detachment of 300 marines under a field officer to work around the clock, unloading, sorting and reloading. To the enternal disgust of the marines, the New Zealander dock unions insisted on regular tea breaks and refused to work their crews in the inclement weather that soon arrived. The police summarily ordered them off the docks, and with the exception of the operators of the loading machinery, all work was performed by the leathernecks.

The quay was pelted by the rain and as the marines worked, the rain melted the flimsy cardboard packaging of many supplies, washed the labels off of cans and caused the waterlogged cartons to split open and spill their contents. The quay soon became a marsh with dunes of cornflakes intermingled with paper pulp, clothing, candy bars, cigarettes and ration cans. It truely was a sight that would never be forgotten.

On 8 Aug, 1942, the marines landed on Guadalcanal and operations onBeach Red soon ran into trouble. The beach was littered with ground landing craft and was covered in boxes, crates and barrels. Off shore, more landing craft idled, waiting for a spot on the beach to open up and allow them to land. To unload the craft, there were only 300 men of the 1st Pioneer Battalion. So bad was the situation, that the transports were ordered to each detach 15 sailors to go ashore and assist, but even this was not enough to make sense of the bedlam ashore. The only respite to the beach congestion occuried when the Japanese air raid halted operations for three and a half hours.