http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/in-1942-it-came-down-to-one-marine-65931412.html
VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: In 1942, it came down to one Marine
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It’s hard to envision — or, for the dwindling few, to remember — what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942, when a few thousand U.S. Marines stood essentially stranded on the God-forsaken jungle island of Guadalcanal, placed like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, the most likely route for the Japanese Navy to take if they hoped to reach Australia.
On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S. Navy vessels from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.
As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully placing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings, manning their section of the thin khaki line that was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault everyone expected on the night of Oct. 25, 1942, it’s unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to what had previously been a mainly theoretical question: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against a desperate attacking force of 2,000?
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Is the lesson that we should fund a permanent expensive worldwide empire of military occupation? I don’t think so — doesn’t seem compatible, somehow, with a republican government of limited powers. Overstretched empires have a tendency to collapse from the center, anyway. In fact, our forces were pretty far-flung, as it was, in 1941 — though their apparent strength, in places like the Philippines, proved hollow.
But once, 85 long years ago, the arrogant victorious allies quibbled about whether bankrupt Germany should be made to pay them $4 billion or $10 billion in reparations over the next 60 years, as frustrated German veterans in Bavaria grew fed up and marched down to join the German Workers’ Party, an outfit that promised them a rebirth of Aryan glory, a “New Deal,” if you will.
Once, those who sought “peace, peace at any price” sold scrap steel to the Japanese, attended “peace conferences,” stood by and hoped for the best as Hitler re-militarized the Rhineland and then grabbed Austria and the Sudentenland in what we now know were a series of huge bluffs — the fuhrer started out using “tanks” that would barely have stood up to a cap pistol.
We gave away our advantages, one by one, based on our trust in the good will of man. Till it came down to one Marine.
Shall we have to cut it that close, again?
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One Marine?
Is this like the Texas Ranger slogan, “one riot; one Ranger!”?
We have a lot to learn. And, peace at all costs is a losing strategy. As Heinlein said: “An armed society is a polite society.” That goes for the community of nations as well.
Requiescat In Pacem Marine Corps Col. Mitchell Paige.
Where will we find more of men like him? In the playstation generation?
Not bloody well likely.
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