Alexander Vandegrift
Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, coast watcher Cornelius Page, a plantation manager on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland in the South Pacific, reported by teleradio that Japanese planes were making reconnaissance flights over New Ireland and New Britain. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
On the humid morning of August 19, 1942, infantrymen from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines carefully eyed the landscape for any signs of Japanese soldiers as they slowly made their way through the thick jungle on the island of Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
On August 6, 1942, the men of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift’s U.S. 1st Marine Division watched from the railings as their troopship, the USS George F. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
In April 1942, a group of young Marines, having recently graduated from Officers Candidate School, arrived at New River, North Carolina, a sprawling tent city that stretched over a vast area and would eventually become known as Camp Lejeune. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
Above all, the island was defendable. From Ritidian Point in the north to the extreme southern coastline, Guam is 34 miles long, made in an irregular shape covering 228 square miles, the largest of all Pacific islands between Japan and New Guinea. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
A United States naval task force bearing the U.S. 1st Marine Division arrived off Guadalcanal, in the eastern Solomon Islands, on the morning of August 7, 1942, and launched the first American offensive operation of World War II. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
On the morning of November 6, 1942, a force of 267 Marines took its first steps into the jungle from a landing point at Aola Bay, roughly 30 miles east of the American perimeter on Guadalcanal. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?” Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
By June 1942, the military might of Imperial Japan threatened Australia. The string of spectacular Japanese conquests in the South Pacific menaced lines of supply and communication between the United States and its allies and bases in the region. Read more
Alexander Vandegrift
Born in 1887 in Virginia, Alexander Archer Vandegrift was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in 1909. Read more
