[USMCRET6391]

Rendezvous at Gavutu

After four months of war, the 1st Marine Division was alerted to its first prospect of action. The vital Samoan Islands appeared to be next on the Japanese invasion list and the Navy called upon the Marines to provide the necessary reinforcements for the meager garrison. In March 1942, Headquarters created two brigades for the mission, cutting a regiment and a slice of supporting forces from each of the two Marine divisions. The 7th Marines got the nod at New River and became the nucleus of the 3d Brigade. That force initially included Edson's 1st Raider Battalion, but no paratroopers. In the long run that was a plus for the 1st Parachute Battalion, which remained relatively untouched as the brigade siphoned off much of the best manpower and equipment of the division to bring itself to full readiness. The division already was reeling from the difficult process of wartime expansion. In the past few months it had absorbed thousands of newly minted Marines, subdivided units to create new ones, given up some of its best assets to field the raiders and parachutists, and built up a base and training areas from the pine forests of New River, North Carolina.

The parachutists and the remainder of the division did not have long to wait for their own call to arms, however. In early April, Headquarters alerted the 1st Marine Division that it would begin movement overseas in May. The destination was New Zealand, where everyone assumed the division would have months to complete the process of turning raw manpower into well-trained units. Part of the division shoved off from Norfolk in May. Some elements, including Companies B and C of the parachutists, took trains to the West Coast and boarded naval transports there on 19 June. The rest of the 1st Parachute Battalion was part of a later Norfolk echelon, which set sail for New Zealand on 10 June.

While the parachutists were still at sea, the advance echelon of the division had already bedded down in New Zealand. But the 1st Marine Division's commander, Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, received a rude shock shortly after he and his staff settled into their headquarters at a Wellington hotel. He and his outfit were slated to invade and seize islands in the southern Solomons group on 1 August, just five weeks hence. To complicate matters, there was very little solid intelligence about the objectives. There were no maps on hand, so the division had to create its own from poor aerial photos and sketches hand-drawn by former planters and traders familiar with the area.

Planners estimated that there were about 5,275 enemy on Guadalcanal (home to a Japanese air field under construction) and a total of 1,850 on Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo. Tulagi, 17 miles north of Guadalcanal, was valuable for its anchorage and seaplane base. The islets of Gavutu and Tanambogo, joined by a causeway, hosted a sea plane base and Japanese shore installations and menaced the approaches to Tulagi. In reality, there were probably 536 men on Gavutu Tanambogo, most of them part of construction or aviation support units, though there was at least one platoon of the 3d Kure Special Naval Landing Force, the ground combat arm of the Imperial Navy. The list of heavy weapons on Gavutu Tanambogo included two three-inch guns and an assortment of antiaircraft and antitank guns and machine guns.

By the time the last transports docked in New Zealand on 11 July, planners had outlined the operation and the execution date bad slipped to 7 August to allow the division a chance to gather its far-flung echelons and combat load transports. Five battalions of the 1st and 5th Marines would land on the large island of Guadalcanal at 0800 on 7 August and seize the unfinished airfield on the north coast. The 1st Raider Battalion, slated to meet the division on the way to the objective, would simultaneously assault Tulagi. The 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, would follow in trace and support the raiders. The 2d Marines, also scheduled to rendezvous with the division at sea, would serve as the reserve force and land 20 minutes prior to H-Hour on Florida Island, thought to be undefended. The parachutists received the mission of attacking Gavutu at H plus four hours. The delay resulted from the need for planes, ships, and landing craft to concentrate first in support of the Tulagi operation. Once the paratroopers secured Gavutu, they would move on to its sister. The Tulagi, Gavutu-Tanambogo, and Florida operations fell under the immediate control of a task force designated as the Northern Group, headed by Brigadier General William H. Rupertus, the assistant division commander.

After a feverish week of unloading, sorting, and reloading equipment and supplies, the parachutists boarded the transport USS Heywood on 18 July and sailed in convoy to Koro Island in the Fijis, where the entire invasion force conducted landing rehearsals on 28 and 30 July. These went poorly, since the Navy boat crews and most of the 1st Marine Division were too green. The parachute battalion was better trained than most of the division, but this was its very first experience as a unit in conducting a seaborne landing. There is no indication that planners gave any thought to using their airborne capability, though in all likelihood that was due to the lack of transport aircraft or the inability of available planes to make a round-trip flight from New Zealand to the Solomons.