Hello and welcome to episode 117 of the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast. My name is Seth Parrotton, historian, and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum here at Camp Shelby, and with me, as always, is my esteemed co-host, retired Navy Captain Bill Toadie. Former Skipper of the Fast Attack Submarine U.S.S. Indianapolis, Commodore Submarine Squadron 3 at Pearl Harbor and many other postings. How are you this fine morning bill? I'm doing great.

I'm trying to learn U.S.S. Indianapolis, Commodore Submarine Squadron 3 at Pearl Harbor, and many other

postings. How are you this fine morning bill? I'm doing great. I'm trying to learn how to pronounce

botanical today, so we're going to. You got it. You nailed it. This week, we'd like to welcome

back our friend Dave Holland. Dave is a former United States Marine owns and runs a Facebook and YouTube channel called Guadalacanau Walking and Battlefield. He's a Solomon Islands battlefield guide and most importantly, yet again, we said this before and it rings true every single time, a Guadalcanal expert. Welcome back, Dave. Glad to have you, man. Glad to be back and I'm looking forward to your chat again.

Oh yeah, we got some good stuff to talk about today.

A very inspiring story among many of the inspiring stories around Guadalcanal is one of the ones we're going to hit today.

But anyway, back to what we're going to talk about today.

This week we'll be talking about the early actions that occurred along the Matanacow River.

Now, as opposed to the land battles we've discussed before, Teneru and Edson's Ridge specifically, they each only really happened one time,

those specific battles. The Matanakow actions, however, occurred several times from September all the way

even through November, actually even in August, if you want to be technical.

Today we'll be focusing just on the September and the October actions, however.

Following the Battle of Edson's Ridge, what remained of the Japanese force under General Kawaguchi pulled back through the jungle

and attempted to regroup as well as refit on the western side of the Matanacow River.

Marine General Archer Vandergriff was aware that the Japanese had done this very thing and planned to

eliminate whatever was left of that force that had slammed against the ridge on two consecutive nights

in September. Vandergriff was determined to mop up what was left to the Japanese so as to deny

them the opportunity to consolidate

their forces and resume their offensive. Vandergriff chose his freshest troops for this action,

those being the recently arrived 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines under a lieutenant colonel whose name

was and still is synonymous with the Corps. Lewis B. Chesty Puller.

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