Bloody Ridge and Beyond: A World War II Marine's Memoir of Edson's Raiders in the Pacific - Softcover

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Marlin F. Groft was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1939 to 1941, and then became a silk-screen printer in a textile factory. He joined the U.S. Marines after Pearl Harbor and, following boot camp, he volunteered for the 1st Marine Raider Battalion under Lt. Col. Merritt A. Edson, and served with that unit until its dissolution. Assigned to the 29th Marine Regiment of the newly formed 6th Marine Division, he served beyond the end of the war, seeing duty in China until the end of 1945. Groft and his wife, Vivian, live in a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, retirement community.

Larry Alexander is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers and the coauthor (with Adam Makos) of A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II, another New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of Shadows in the Jungle: The Alamo Scouts Behind Japanese Lines in World War II and In the Footsteps of the Band of Brothers: A Return to Easy Company’s Battlefields with Sgt. Forrest Guth. Alexander has been a journalist and columnist for Lancaster newspapers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for nearly twenty years and has won numerous state-level awards for excellence in journalism.

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PREFACE

QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

AUGUST 6, 1989

On the warm, sunny Sunday morning of August 6, 1989, I and a number of my colleagues of the 1st Raider Battalion, the famed Edson’s Raiders, stood on the grounds of the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, not to train for war as we had done forty-seven years prior, but to remember our departed brethren and our Raider legacy. We had returned to where it all began for the Raiders in order to dedicate a memorial as part of the Quantico National Cemetery.

I am more than a little proud of the fact that the idea for the memorial had been first floated by me six years earlier during the funeral of Ben Howland, who had been something of a legend in the Raiders. A tenured professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia after the war, Ben had become both a teacher and mentor to my son Eric, who was studying at the university’s School of Architecture.

At the reception following Ben’s death, several Raiders commented that Ben had not been buried at Arlington, but rather was interred at the Quantico cemetery, which, we noted, incorporated some of the very ground we had trained on in 1942. Would it not be appropriate, I mused, if a memorial to the Raiders would be erected on the site?

Coincidentally that summer, Eric had an internship as a student landscape architect with the Veterans’ Administration’s National Cemetery Service. The Quantico National Cemetery had just recently been opened and was being viewed as a “replacement” cemetery for Arlington. In his capacity as a landscape architect, Eric embraced the idea of the memorial, which we envisioned as being placed alongside a memorial path through the woods.

The idea took wing and over the following year, a memorial committee was formed. Eric donated his time to work on concepts and ideas that were presented at the annual Raider Reunion in February 1984. Since our reunions were held at Quantico, we walked the memorial trail. Getting the needed approvals proved somewhat frustrating, with government bureaucracy being notoriously slow. Plus we had to raise funds, although after all this time, I no longer recall how much we needed. Finally, it all came together.

Eric’s plan called for the creation of a small parklike setting shaded by towering oak trees and partially enclosed by a low stone wall. A path weaves through a series of low granite boulders emerging from the ground, each representing one of the islands where we Raiders fought and bled, principally Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Makin, New Georgia, and Bougainville. The design included a bench that overlooked the cemetery and our former training grounds. The ground-cover vegetation assumes the role of the Pacific Ocean, lapping around the granite “islands.” A large boulder near the bench holds a bronze tablet that briefly outlines the Raiders’ history and our stand on Bloody Ridge.

A number of invited guests attended the dedication, including the sons of our late commander, Austin and Robert Edson. Dedicatory remarks were made by General Alfred M. Gray, the Marine Corps Commandant, and the memorial marker itself was unveiled by the widows of Lew Walt and Ben Howland.

As Taps was blown to conclude the ceremony, I paused to reflect on the pride each of us Raiders felt that day; pride in our commander, in our unit, and in ourselves.

—

The Raiders were formed on February 16, 1942, and existed until February 1, 1944, fifteen days shy of two years. More than eight thousand men served in what eventually became four Raider battalions. Of that number, 892 never returned home.

Yet over that short period of time, we carved a legend for ourselves on far-flung battlefields like Hill 281 on Tulagi, Tasimboko, the God-awful Bloody Ridge, and along the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal, and in the jungles around Enogai and Bairoko on New Georgia.

I was a member of the 1st Raider Battalion, serving under Colonel Merritt A. Edson. By being a member of that magnificent organization, I was among the very first Americans to take the war to our enemies as we landed on Tulagi, an hour before the Guadalcanal fight began. As part of Edson’s reconnaissance patrol, I scouted the barren hilltop that would become known as Bloody Ridge, and stood with him atop that blood-soaked ridge as thousands of Japanese tried to sweep us aside in two desperate nights of hand-to-hand fighting. I was with the Raiders in the fierce fighting amid the stinking jungles on New Georgia, and remained a member of the unit until its disbanding.

Counting myself among those who served in this valiant battalion of the finest men in the United States Marine Corps is perhaps the proudest achievement of my life.

These are my remembrances, which I hope will serve as a legacy to the brave Marines who fought beside me and shared my hardships, preserved for my grandsons and for future generations of my fellow Raiders.

Semper Fi,
Marlin “Whitey” Groft
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
May 2014

INTRODUCTION

In my twenty-plus years of being a journalist, I have had the distinct honor of interviewing combat veterans from every American war of the twentieth century, from World War I through Iraq. In each instance, I have found their valor, courage, and willingness to put themselves in harm’s way for their nation to be inspiring. In a few cases, most particularly Major Richard D. Winters and Sergeant Forrest Guth, both with the famed “Band of Brothers,” they became friends.

The same can be said for Marlin F. “Whitey” Groft.

I met Marlin in 2009 when I was looking for a veteran on whom to write a newspaper story to run on Veterans Day. I knew Whitey had been a Marine during the war, and that he had served on Guadalcanal. I did not know until I began the interview that he had been a member of one of the Marine Corps’s most famous World War II fighting organizations, Edson’s Raiders.

As a historian who specializes in the Second World War, I certainly knew who Merritt Austin Edson and what were sometimes referred to as his “do-or-die men” were and what they had done. I had studied the Battle of Guadalcanal intensely and also read many of the fine accounts written about the Raiders, including Edson’s Raiders by the eminent military historian Joseph H. Alexander, who is, so far as I know, no relation. So as Whitey spoke about Bloody Ridge during our interview, I could follow the action in my head.

Of all the Pacific battles, to me the Guadalcanal campaign is the quintessential struggle. Not just because lessons the American commanders learned during this first land offensive were put to use in later invasions, but because it was the only land battle after America went over to the offensive that America came seriously close to losing. It was hastily planned, poorly executed, abysmally supplied and supported, and at one point, the Marine ground commander, Major General Alexander Vandegrift, was authorized by his superiors to surrender his forces if necessary. And of all the many individual battles on Guadalcanal, the Raiders’ valiant two-day stand against an overwhelming number of Japanese soldiers on what is called both Edson’s Ridge and Bloody Ridge was the most important fight of the entire campaign. Had the Japanese taken the ridge, they’d have plunged straight through the Marine defensive perimeter, taken Henderson airfield, split the American forces in half, and, quite likely, forced the surviving Marines into the jungle to fight as a disorganized guerilla force, or to simply starve to death, because there would be no American Dunkirk from a U.S. Navy still reeling after Pearl Harbor.

Edson’s recognizing the strategic value of the...