About Us

We are a Battalion of the Famed 5th Regiment (battalion and regiment under the 1st Marine Division).

The 1st marine Division landed on Guadalcanal Island August 7th 1942, scarcely eight months after Pearl Harbor and defeated the Japanese Army. The defeat turned the tide of defeats the US had been suffering, and from that time on, the Japanese were on the retreat.

The G2/5 suffered 102 killed in action during WWII and in excess of 500 men wounded in action. The total time in combat (days in action) about 325 days in four combat operations.

While serving on active duty, we proudly wore the 5th Marines, French Fourragere earned in WWII by the 5th and 6th Marines.

The G2/5 was considered part of a "Raider" Battalion in August of 1942 and in the invasion of Guadalcanal. They hit an secured Tulagi across the bay from the Island of Guadalcanal, and was a very hard fire fight. The battalion then joined the division on Guadalcanal for the balance of the campaign that lasted over 5 months.

The battles G2/5 took part in were Guadalcanal (Tulagi), Cape Glouchester (Talasea), Peleliu and Okinawa. Immediately after the "peace" was signed, the 1st Division was dispatched to North China. Our duty there was to "disarm Japanese and repatriate their army personnel". The 1st Division stayed on duty in North China for the next four years as a military presence until a political solution could be reached with the "reds" it was relatively quiet occupation with few casualties.

During WWII the G2/5 shared in the Honor of receiving three Presidential Unit Citations, Guadacanal and surrounding Islands, Peleliu, and Negusebus Islands, and including Okinawa Shima, Ryukyu Islands

Like the entire First Marine Division, G Co , in February and March of 1942 was growing from a skeleton to a full combat Division. Parris Island was churning out platoon after platoon of young men who had enlisted in the days and weeks after Pearl Harbor, and almost all of them were headed to New Bern, NC. G Co. lived in small wooden shacks, with a row of wooden duckboards running down the Company street, dirt, of course.Beardsley, and McGloin were the Gunnery Sergeants. Beardsley was a grizzled, skinny, bottle a day man. McGloin a tough, hard-faced man was to be awarded the Navy Cross along with Sgt. Dworrnitski for action at the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal in September, 1942. Training was hard and never ending . No one got leave except a very rare day in the neighboring Town of Jacksonville, or an even rarer weekend, when, with luck, a Marine might make it all the way to Myrtle Beach, SC. My experience was a common one, in that I enlisted on December 9, 1941, and received my first furlough in the USA in January, 1945.

We had a mix of Marines from New England and the South, with an NCO group from the Old Corps, and quite a few Marines who had received BCD"S, but had been allowed to reinlist, with the BCD"S to be forgotten if they straightened out, and, of course, if they survived. A couple were good friends of mine, and except for a propensity to get drunk, and get the clap, they were fine Marines in combat. We only made one ship to shore training landing at New River which was a fiasco. Then G Co was put on planes once when they thought we might become airborne troops, but one flight in old DC7s was all we got, then that was forgotten.

In May, off we went to Norfolk, VA, and boarded the USS Wakefield, a big, former cruise ship. Most of G Co. was shoehorned into what had formerly been the dance hall , with metal and canvas bunks four high. Down the East Coast, and through the Panama Canal we went. No liberty in Panama for anyone. Then across the Pacific to Wellington, New Zealand. We arrived in June, and expected to be in Camp Paekakariki for several months, but almost at once, in pouring rain which never stopped, we were ordered to unload, then load again, some Navy transports pulled up to the Wellington docks. The local dockworkers having decided to go on strike. As soon as we got the ships loaded, we embarked and sailed to the Figi Islands where we had a practise landing which was the worst fuck up since the Charge of the Light Brigade. Half the boats didn't get to shore. Those that did got ashore at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong group of Marines. It filled us full of confidence . A week later we landed on Tulagi.

G Co landed on Tulagi on August 7th at about 9:00 AM on a rocky beach. Getting out of the old, wooden Higgins boats without ramps was, as usual, a pain in the ass, but we received no fire from the Japs. The jungle was little damaged. The assault fire from the cruisers and destroyers was pitiful compared with later landings. We climbed the hill from the shore until we reached the trail on the ridge line and headed for the center of the island to our right. We had just started off when we could hear Lew Diamond yelling his head off down below us, getting his 81mm mortars going. The 1st Raider Bn had landed before us, and were in front of us most of the first day. We pushed forward to the Cricket Field, and there G Co lost its first man in the War, my squad leader, Cpl Lewis. The first night on Tulagi, our first night in combat, was terrifying. Everyone was shooting all night. There were no lines as such, everyone was on his own. Hembree and I teamed up , and like everyone else, fired in every direction, at every sound, all night. At first light we expected to be the only ones left alive on the island, but, to our pleasant surprise, G Co had only a couple killed and a few wounded. Hembree and I went out looking for ammunition and grenades, and ran into Frybarger and Huff. Frybarger had just killed a jap, and we went over to look at him and he was the biggest damm Jap I was ever to see in the War. He must have been over six feet tall, with great, heavy hands, wearing an old, WW1 German coal-scuttle helmet, and armed with a rusty bayonet. Later experience would have suggested to us that he was probably a Korean or Chinese laborer, but, at the time, we were mighty impressed.

The fighting went on all that day, but the Raider Bn did most of the killing. G Co trapped some Japs in a cave dug into the side of the road leading to the wharf area, and that was where we learned that Japs did not surrender.

The next night, sitting on a hillside facing Guadalcanal Sound, we saw the most dramatic sea battle take place in front of our widening eyes. Great ships, firing red and white- hot shot, blazing searchlights which lit up opposing ships as if in daylight, rolling waves of sound, and the explosions of ships burning cherry red before disappearing hi the darkness. How we cheered. We did not for an instant even consider that it could be anything but a great victory. The next day our innocence was removed when a Jap destroyer hove to off Tulagi, and slowly, and carefully gave us an hour of shelling without our Navy saying a word. This went on almost every day thereafter for the two weeks we were on Tulagi. Our last casualty on Tulagi was Violette, who was wandering around looking for god knows what when he stumbled on the last living Jap on Tulagi who shot him in the arm with a pistol. After that Jap was killed G Co celebrated by killing a pig the Japs had been raising. The efficiency of the butchers left a lot to be desired, as from a pig who must have weighed 200 pounds, we got only about 20 pounds of meat.

The Japs now having complete control of Guadalcanal Sound, G Co. sneaked over to Guadalcanal from Tulagi on two WW1 destroyers the Gregory and the Little.. A week or so later, both the Gregory and the Little were sunk by the Japs in full view of G Co while the Company was on a long patrol across the Matanikou river, where we also found, at that time, several limbs and parts of the Goettge patrol members, and some of their equipment at the mouth of that river on the side nearest Point Cruz. On that patrol G Co got all the way to Kokumbona Village, running into no Japs. This was before the Japs started to reinforce heavily, as in all the fighting to come on Guadalcanal around the Matanikou river G Co never got as far as Kokumbona Village again.

G Co did most of its fighting on Guadalcanal either on the banks of the Matanikou or near it. The only exception was the Battle of Bloody Ridge as it is now called. We called it the Battle at the Grassey Knoll. There we supported once again the First Raider Bn in a terrible fight in September which cost G Co many killed and wounded. September was a bad month for G Co with 14 killed and 49 wounded. Every day was an air raid, and many nights we were shelled from the sea. It was a bad time. G co was involved in about five major battles on Guadalcanal, but it was the every day bombing and shelling which steadily, over four long months, wore the Company down, as it did the whole Division, so that by December, 1942 there wasn't a man in the Division who wasn't glad to see Guadalcanal disappear over the horizon.

While the number of medals for personal bravery should never go unrecognized, and we will try to list some of the men in our group who were decorated, all combat veterans know that medals alone do not define the acts of bravery.

Welcome to our Web site!

Our last reunion was in May of 2007

Our next reunion is May of 2008 in Washington D.C.