Warriors In Their Own Words | First Person War Stories · Evergreen Podcasts | The Honor Project

Guadalcanal: From the Archive

·1 hr 7 min·2 clips

Croizat almost steps on a Japanese soldier in a ravine, fires his pistol, and misses "by a mile."

1. Warriors In Their Own Words presents "Guadalcanal: From the Archive," a first-person account of the August 1942 landing of 19,000 Marines on Guadalcanal and the weeks that followed. 2. Victor Croizat, a retired Marine Corps colonel, narrates as a young officer who rose from second lieutenant to captain between 1940 and 1942. 3. His account traces the 1st Marine Division's rapid wartime expansion, with the Corps growing from under 30,000 men to 65,000 by his departure and over half a million by 1945. 4. Croizat explains that he joined after receiving a regular commission offer at Syracuse in 1940, then trained at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, studying the Small Wars Manual and Fleet Tactical Publication 167 on amphibious operations. 5. In July 1941 he joined a detachment at a small food machinery factory in Dunedin, Florida, testing Donald Roebling's aluminum amphibian tractor, and says "we were writing the manual as we went along." 6. After arriving in Wellington on 14 June 1942, his company was ordered back aboard ship within days, and General Vandegrift locked out New Zealand stevedores over their tea-break dispute, with Marines doing the loading themselves. 7. At the Fiji rehearsal, the beach was full of coral and boulders and the landing was aborted, and Admiral Fletcher planned to withdraw his carriers within a couple of days, which Vandegrift said "couldn't be done." 8. On 7 August 1942, three amphibian tractors carrying platforms designed with engineer Ike Iglehart formed bridges across a stream, strong enough for jeeps, and Croizat calls it the first use of the tractor outside its logistic role. 9. Croizat describes the Japanese cruiser victory the second night ("four of our cruisers" sunk), two meals a day with sheep's tongue condiments, noon bombings, and the Battle of the Tanaru in which Colonel Ishiki's battalion was wiped out. 10. Suited to readers of Pacific War memoir and Marine Corps history.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Warriors In Their Own Words | First Person War Stories