Down to One Marine... an incredible story

[Obin Robinson]

DOWN TO ONE MARINE

(The full article is posted on Bubba Sez... We're down to one Marine - Forums by Bubba1090)

"On Nov. 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, Calif. , southeast of Palm Springs .

He was a combat veteran of World War II. Reason enough to honor him. But this Marine was a little different. This Marine was Mitchell Paige.

It's hard today to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942.

The U.S. Navy was not the most powerful fighting force in the Pacific. Not by a long shot. So the Navy basically dumped a few thousand lonely American Marines on the beach on Guadalcanal and high-tailed it out of there."

(Message shortened here by leaving out the sea battles)

"On Guadalcanal the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings, manning their section of the thin khaki line which was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?

Nor did the commanders of the mighty Japanese Army, who had swept all before them for decades, expect their advance to be halted on some God- forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942.

But by the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. .... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

You've already figured out where the Japanese focused their attack, haven't you? Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position,
P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either
killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving
from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings -- the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition, glowing cherry red, at its first U.S. Army trial -- and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

And the weapon did not fail.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was first to discover the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines
does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn
would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

But "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."

For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point,
together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."

Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m, discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." They cleared the ridge.

And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal .

But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was -- the ridge held by a single Marine, in the autumn of 1942?

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must
be joking.

But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "G.I. Joe."

God bless you, Colonel Paige. May you rest in peace.

obin

[Ace$nyper]

WOW!

I vote this be front paged, such a hero needs as much respect as we can give him!

If I'm correct wasn't he the man GI Joe was based on?

Insanely heroic stories like this make me really thankful of what freedoms we have.

[Riverwire]

Im good for that, what do you think mike ?

[Mike]

Great story buddy

Had to resize the picture, but I put it on the front page

+50 points for posting this great article Obin

[The Mad Wombat]

A great lesson. No matter how dire your situation, always keep your head! This guy's balls must be carved out of 12 pounds of granite!

[Goose]

No General ever got a Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade... none posthumastly.

[Tornadom]

I don't even know what to say, other than I am proud to be an American.

[Obin Robinson]

i'm glad you guys enjoyed this article. it blew me away when i was reading it and felt that others just NEEDED to read it as well. there's a few other really good ones that i know of. i'll post them up later on.

obin :)

[The Mad Wombat]

Always welcome here my friend!