2/1 Journal Entries from Guadalcanal!

All credit to this post goes to the children of the Marine who recorded this powerful journal. Be sure to click on the links to the site below for more of this journal written by a Marine who was in the same battalion as Aaron.

And when he gets to Heaven

To St. Peter he will tell:

"One more Marine reporting, Sir --

I've served my time in Hell."

Sgt. James A. Donahue
United States Marine Corps.
First Marine Division (H-2-1)

To Hell and Back: A Guadalcanal Journal

The jungle is thick as hell. The Fifth Regiment landed first and marched to the airport. We went straight through and then cut over to block the escape of the Japs. It took three days to go six miles. Japs took off, left surplus first day, which was done away with.

The second day was murder. All along the way were discarded packs, rifles, mess gear and everything imaginable. The second night it rained like hell and the bugs were terrific. The Second Battalion (First Regiment) had reached the Lunga River... [emphasis mine.]

The third day we came back. The Japs had beat us in their retreat. We took up beach defense positions. We have been bombed every day by airplanes, and a submarine shells us every now and then. Our foxholes are four-foot deep. We go out on night patrols and it’s plenty rugged. We lay in the foxholes for 13 to 14 hours at a clip and keep firing at the Japs in the jungle. As yet, there is no air support. The mosquitoes are very bad at night. The ants and flies bother us continually. The planes strafed the beach today. A big naval battle ensued the second day we were here, which resulted in our ship, the Elliott, being sunk. All of our belongings were lost.

[editor's note: This exciting journal was first began while he was a PFC with 2/1 in Guadalcanal. His son continues with his own intro. This is great!]

So begins my father’s firsthand account of his grueling experience on the island of Guadalcanal. He wrote his Guadalcanal Journal in 1942 when he was a 21-year old Marine, but more than a half-century would go by before my brother and sisters and I got to read it. For years the brown leather Journal lay buried in a bureau drawer. The miniscule words had faded and were hard to decipher. Then, last July, not long after my father’s death, my mother found a typed transcript of the diary among his papers. My dad had never talked much about Guadalcanal when he was alive. Now we know why.