The Army Relieves

By the time the hot, soggy breath of Christmas Day began to blow across the dank jungles of Guadalcanal, the Marines were writing the last lines to the brightest page in their Corps' history. This time the "scuttlebutt" was true: they were going to be relieved. Last week the War Department finally announced that the job had been completed. Guadalcanal's fighting force (except for airmen still provided by the Navy) was now made up of Army troops.

After almost five months of continuous action on one of the most perilous beachheads they ever defended, the Marines deserved a rest. Not in recent history had U.S. fighting men seen so much continuous front-line action. Under studious, composed Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift, they had met 15,000 Japanese and learned by bitter experience how to meet the Japs' strange, unorthodox tactics of the jungle.

When they left, 10,000 of the foe had been knocked out of action. Seven thousand had been killed (by actual count of bodies), 3,000 had been done in by disease, starvation, wounds or capture.

Yet the 4,000 who remained kept on fighting in the best Japanese tradition, and U.S. forces still held only a small bite of the island. The departing Marines well knew that the Army had no picnic ahead, that it would be weeks or months before the U.S. could say it held even Guadalcanal, much less the Solomons, in military fee simple.

The Army sent a seasoned veteran to carry on the fight: tall, lean, 53-year-old Major General Alexander McCarrell Patch Jr. Born into the Army (at Fort Huachucua, Ariz.) West Pointer Patch had long been in command in New Caledonia, where he learned jungle fighting and taught it to his troops.

Back in the States, the Marines spoke with admiration of their successors, of the way they had settled down after the first few days under fire, of their superb supply system, of bulldozers that thundered through the jungles beating out roads for the cleanup drive into the interior. The big outfit had taken over, had killed 1,000 more Japs up to Jan. 14. Looking to other conquests, the history-minded Marines were satisfied.

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