In the aftermath of the Matanikau Offensive, the 5^th Marines established the largest field burial site outside on Guadalcanal – and it remains undiscovered to this day.

By Geoffrey Roecker

MAURICE RAPHAEL couldn’t get the hill of dead men off his mind.

“Saw Ausili die,” he wrote in his journal. “Louis Kovacs was dead but still warm. Harland Swart, Carlson, Potocki, Doucette, Waterstraw… everyone was dead… shot to hell and back…. I saw Jack Holland, leader 2^nd Platoon, shot in the shoulder. Henry Loughman was shot in the groin and died… I found Crosby’s body. Poor fellow, he never knew what hit him.”[1]

Raphael, a second lieutenant serving with Company B, First Battalion, 5^th Marines had survived Nov. 1, 1942, the first day of a renewed offensive across Guadalcanal’s Matanikau River. Some 39 men in his battalion alone had not been as fortunate, and three more would yet die of wounds they received on that single bloody day. Company C took the brunt of the casualties; many were in the platoon led by Raphael’s friend, 2Lt. David H. Crosby, Jr. At about 0830h, the point squad stumbled upon a Japanese strong point hidden in a ravine and were chewed up by “a withering barrage of fire,” according to 2Lt. Gerard T. Armitage.[2] The reserves, including 2Lt. Raphael’s platoon arrived on the scene at 1000h; they cleaned out the surviving defenders but were stunned at the carnage inflicted on their buddies. “It was the saddest and most awful sight I ever saw in my life,” said Raphael.[3]

As in any engagement on Guadalcanal, once the bullets stopped flying and the wounded were safely on their way back to field hospitals at the perimeter, attention turned to the disposition of the dead. It was important for survivors to collect the bodies quickly. Decomposition begins rapidly in the jungle, and the obvious sanitation hazards this presented – to say nothing of the morale-sapping effect on the buddies of the deceased – meant that, whenever practicable, burial took place as soon as possible. All too frequently, this meant interment in the field rather than the island cemetery.

An order issued before the Marines landed on Guadalcanal stipulated that “when possible, isolated interment will be avoided.” This order, easily followed when fatalities occurred within a short distance of the perimeter, was more challenging to execute when any appreciable distance was involved.[4] However, practical experience soon proved that evacuating the dead from the scenes of remote clashes – mostly combat patrols, or the rare cases where the Marines failed to hold their ground – was extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Dozens of isolated burials – “isolated” being the term for any group of fewer than 12 bodies – and small cemeteries sprung up around these remote battlegrounds. They were intended to be strictly temporary. Graves were dug in visible locations along trails or tree lines and marked by homemade crosses or helmets on sticks. Officers did their best to record the sites on their crude maps. The prevailing belief was that somebody would be back to retrieve the bodies once the battle ended. Even in cases where Marines had to be left unburied, their last known locations were recorded to aid in later searches.

On Nov. 2, 1942, First Battalion began to gather its dead. Of the 39 fatalities reported on the previous day, nine were interred in the 1^st Marine Division Cemetery. Some of these died of wounds on their way to the hospital; two others were officers, including 2Lt. Crosby. The remainder – 30 enlisted men – were all buried in the field. The same location was recorded for each man: “About 400 yards west of Point Cruz, about 600 yards inland from the sea, on the island of Guadalcanal.” Thirty markers in a small area must have been an arresting sight – and, one would presume, a highly visible one. Yet to this day, only seven of these Marines have ever been located, and the exact location of the rest remains a mystery.

The temporary nature of these isolated burials sometimes worked against finding them later. In almost all cases on Guadalcanal, the men doing the burying were combat troops not trained in the particulars of graves registration.[5] Burial sites were improperly or incompletely marked, dug too shallow or too deep, or sited close to flood-prone streams or rivers. They risked damage or destruction by further combat, foraging animals, natural events, and the occasional desecration by the enemy.

Guadalcanal was declared secure on Feb. 9, 1943; a few days later, U.S. Army swept the island for isolated graves, which included Marines killed early in the battle. That the First Battalion’s burial ground – which was comparatively close to the hotly contested airfield – was not discovered suggests that any markers emplaced were damaged or destroyed in subsequent fighting.

Guadalcanal later became a massive supply base, as well as a training ground; occasionally troops out on maneuvers or hunting for souvenirs stumbled upon isolated graves. When this happened, a graves registration team would be dispatched to bring in the bodies.

On March 18, 1944, a report of burials included Sgt. Louis P. Kovacs, Sgt. Harland P. Swart, Jr., Cpl. Terrence J. Reynolds, Jr., Pvt. Albert E. Ausili, and one “unidentified” – later determined to be Pvt. Austin W. Pollock.[6] These five men were the only ones found at the site until Cpl. William F. Wheeler was discovered on Sept. 10, 1945.

In 1947, the U.S. Army’s 604^th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company mounted an expedition to the Solomon Islands in search of unrecovered dead. Although armed with all available information, the effort was mostly futile.

A second expedition in 1949 redoubled the efforts, searching thousands of square yards around Point Cruz. But even with the help of local guides, they came up short.

Two group burial sites were located, but only one Marine – Pvt. Lawrence F. Keane – was identified; the remainder of the bones were determined to be Japanese. Keane was the last of the First Battalion men found. In 1949, the rest were classified as permanently non-recoverable.

Analysis of period maps, aerial photographs, and satellite imagery by research Dave R. Holland has helped to narrow the potential site of the long-lost cemetery. Between a pair of ridges once called Hills 84 and 78 runs a narrow ravine – a well-trodden path in the battle-torn landscape around Point Cruz.

Faced with dozens of dead, and with another action brewing at Koli Point, the Marines might have chosen this relatively quiet spot to bury their fallen buddies, hoping to be back in a few days or weeks. Instead, 23 Marines remain unaccounted for, a tragic footnote in the history of Guadalcanal.

Company A

PFC John Monaco
Pvt. Charles H. Ludwig

Company C

Cpl. Frederick J. Carlson
Cpl. Alvin A. Tarant
PFC Owen W. Craddock
PFC Robert M. Eastburn
PFC Fred A. Foxworthy
PFC Christopher Waterstraw
Pvt. Arthur Doucette
Pvt. Joseph E. Goulet
Pvt. William B. Hall
Pvt. Matthew J. Kirchner
Pvt. Andrew McConnell
Pvt. Theodore A. Potocki
Pvt. William F. Seiverling
Pvt. Bela Varga
Pvt. Lee J. Weiss

Company D
Cpl. Lewis R. Robarts
PFC Joseph P. Corriggio
Pvt. Anthony Antonoglou
Pvt. Frank W. Lawton
Pvt. Joseph J. Seymour
Pvt. Thomas C. White

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Geoffrey Roecker is the author of Leaving Mac Behind: The Lost Marines of Guadalcanal, published by Casemate. When not researching military history, Geoffrey is a New Jersey-based digital copywriter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes

[1] Maurice Raphael, diary entry quoted in 124 Cong. Rec. 37896 (1978).

[2] Gerard T. Armitage, “Statement on the Death of Lt. Crosby,”  The Carlisle Sentinel (Carlisle, PA), 15 April 1943; 9.

[3] Raphael, diary entry.

[4] 1st Marine Division, “Division Circular 6a-42: Personnel Administration,” July 10,

1942 (Marine Corps Archives, Quantico, VA).

[5] In fact, the Marine Corps had no established protocol for training graves registration men at this point in the war. An ad-hoc unit managed the cemetery until Army quartermaster personnel arrived to take over. Historian Edward Steere referred to graves registration during this period as “an indigenous growth, improvised for the express purpose of meeting a series of local emergencies.” For a detailed analysis, see Steere, The Graves Registration Service in WWII (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1951).

[6] Pollock was identified from “Unknown X-90” in 1951. The remains of two other men were found with his remains; they are currently designated “X-91A” and “X-91B” and are thought to be Japanese soldiers.