This is Jockel Podcast number 262 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo, good evening.

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Colonel Merritt A. Edson, United States Marine Corps, for service as set forth in the following citation,

for extraordinary heroism and conspicuous interpettidity above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the first Marine Raider battalion with parachute battalion attached during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on the night of 13, 14 September 1942.

After the airfield on Guadalcanal had been seized from the enemy on August 8, Colonel Edson with a force of 800 men was assigned to the occupation and defense of a ridge dominating the jungle on either side of the airport, facing a formidable Japanese attack which augmented by infiltration had crashed through our front lines.

He by skillful handling of his troops successfully withdrew his forward units to a reserve line with minimum casualties.

When the enemy in a subsequent series of violent assaults engaged our force in desperate hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, rifles, pistols, grenades and knives,

Colonel Edson, although continuously exposed a hostile fire throughout the night, personally directed defense of the reserve position against a fanatical foe of greatly superior numbers.

By his astute leadership and gallant devotion to duty, he enabled his men despite severe losses to cling tenaciously to their position on the vital ridge, thereby retaining command,

not only of the Guadalcanal airfield, but also of the first divisions entire offensive installations in the surrounding area.

Signed Franklin D. Roosevelt.

That is an example of the level of heroism that was required to achieve victory in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which lasted from August 7, 1942 until February 9, 1943,

six months and two days of just absolutely brutal and savage fighting.

Then we've covered some of that in several books on the podcast, and we even had Dean Ladd on the podcast, who received a battlefield commission on Guadalcanal and went on to fight at Tarwa and Saipan and Tinian.

But I recently received a copy of a book from a podcast listener by the name of David.

I guess I'm a little cautious about giving out full names because I don't know, you know, don't know the background.

So a guy named David, he sent me a book. It's actually not a book technically.

It's a Fleet Marine Force reference publication, FMFRP12TAC110.

The title is Fighting on Guadalcanal. So thank you, David, for sending that to me.

And the book is filled with all kinds of layers.

One of them being the Medal of Honor citation that I started with. There's an additional layer in this, which is that this,

that this Fleet Marine Force reference publication was put together by a guy named Colonel Red Reader, who was West Point Class of 1926, who led the 12th Infantry Regiment, who ended the day.

And he eventually was wounded and he received the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star and the Legion of Merid and the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

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