The Press: Tough as Marines

This may be my last dispatch from Guadalcanal. I can’t write any more. Too damn exhausted to think.

War Correspondent Francis McCarthy’s warning reflected the mood and condition of everyone on Guadalcanal, fighting men and correspondents alike. The 31-year-old, Manila-born U.P. man had survived several attacks of dysentery, a half dozen assorted tropical complaints, a broken rib. But a final threeday, all-out Jap assault did him in. He was removed to safety, together with most of the remaining Guadalcanal correspondents and the cameraman.

Very much the worse for wear, the resident members of the Guadalcanal Press Club had seen and experienced more tough combat than any U.S. correspondents in World War II. Reporters on Bataan could recuperate in the rock caverns of Corregidor. On Guadalcanal, reporters’ protection consisted solely of the fighting marines. Unlike many of their whip-corded, cane-carrying, limousine-borne forebears of World War I, Guadalcanal newspapermen literally become “fighting correspondents.”

Robert C. Miller (U.P.) and Richard Tregaskis (I.N.S.) were first ashore. They rolled on to the beach with the marines who took over the island. Some other reporters were rescued from ships that were sunk, never got there.

At first the correspondents lived in foxholes. When the marines had the situation in hand, the correspondents got a five-bunk tent (“The Press Club”) with a luxurious wood floor and a water-bucket shower bath.

Miller and Tregaskis stuck it out longer (six weeks) than most of the correspondents. They went into action several times wearing green marine uniforms, packing 453. When they discovered that they were on the Jap snipers’ preferred list they discarded their green and white “C” arm bands. Acme Pictures’ Sherman Montrose was with them, and many of the Guadalcanal pictures were the product of his work and risks. (He probably provoked the veteran marine sergeant who said: “If I’m going to get it, I’m going to get it. But I’m not going to get bumped off on the top of a hill like those dumb newspapermen with their cameras.”)

When Miller finally got too tired to turn out copy, he left for Honolulu with a rare parting tribute from Major General Alexander Vandegrift. Said the commander of the Guadalcanal marines: “Robert C. Miller is a good marine.”

U.P.’s William Tyree visited the Solomons briefly on his way to another South Pacific assignment and was moved to write: “Of the medals passed around in this war, some should be reserved for the handful of correspondents here. [They] have proved they’re just as tough as marines—otherwise they couldn’t cover this war.” Tyree modestly declined an invitation to join the Guadalcanal Press Club. The initiation ceremony was too strenuous: the members take the tenderfoot out and get him shot at.

Last week Lieut. Herbert Merillat, late of Oxford University, public-relations officer on Guadalcanal, continued the history of the battle, which he is writing in Oxford-Marine-four-letter-word language. He would have been interested in some notes made by the Chicago Sun’s John Graham Dowling, 29, son of Actor Eddie Dowling, during the three-day bombardment that preceded the correspondents’ recent removal:

“The world has become a nightmare of bombs and shells. It is incredible. It is almost beyond belief that we are still here, still alive, still waiting and still ready. We cannot write in this madness, but we keep notes with shaking hands. . . I trade a Jap helmet for two quarts of grain alcohol. I’ve got war nerves again. . . .

“Jap battleships shell us with 14-inch shells and everything else. Eight of us huddle in the shelter, sweating and praying. The worst experience I’ve ever been through in my life. … It goes on for hour after hour. I begin trembling. It is uncontrollable. Francis McCarthy and I clutch each other’s hands for mutual comfort.

“Sgt. Jim Hurlbut asks above the shellfire: ‘Do any of you fellows mind if I say the Lord’s Prayer?’ We press him and he recites the prayer in a loud voice that fills the dugout above the noise of the guns and comforts us. We murmur ‘Amen’ when he is finished and sit in shocked silence while the earth continues to rock.

“We are convinced that no one can live under any more of this and still it goes on. One of the men in the shelter sobs and sobs and we cannot help him. Another correspondent buries his face in his hands and sits that way hour after hour. At dawn, when we come out of the ground, filthy and shaken to the heart, five Jap Zeros come over the airfield and start skywriting above us. … The troops stand gazing up. What are they doing?

“Let them come. Let them come.”