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cruisers.
    â€œSuddenly on Friday morning September 18, 1942, the loudspeakers blared,” Basilone recalled on the transport, “‘All Marines go to your debarkation stations!’ We climbed the narrow ladders to positions on the deck above the cargo nets draped over the side and heard the squeaking of the davits as they were swung out and landing craft lowered. The whole length of the ship was swarming with Marines scrambling down the nets into the boats. One by one the boats scooted off to the rendez-vous areas where they awaited, circling. Breaking out of the tight circles, wave after wave sped for the beach.
    â€œOur landing was unopposed and we poured in.”
    Marine Ops reports simply, “The reinforced 7th Marines unloaded its 4,262 men,” as three other transports, also peacefully, delivered aviation fuel, ammo, engineering equipment, and the like along the same tranquil stretch of coastline.
    Phyllis’s account of her brother’s landing makes it sound dramatic, while the official account dismisses it as a mere “unloading.” Her newspaper series, with Basilone now ashore on the embattled island, then wanders into pulp magazine fiction, and it seems reasonable to suggest that some of the Basilone lore about his combat experiences from this point on derives from his sister’s fanciful journalism and not necessarily from the facts. If there are Marines and others who question any of Basilone’s feats of arms, they should consider that the man himself wasn’t making these absurd claims; it was his loving sister many years later who conjured up the theatricals.
    A week would pass before the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, was sent into concerted action (on September 24), in the so-called probe by Chesty Puller, as recounted by Shaw. With so many men involved and in rough country, there surely must have been a few earlier skirmishes and spontaneous firefights and shelling. But Phyllis has young Johnny Basilone, new to battle, starting to take over the war. Still quoting her brother: “This was the morning of the 24th [a week or so after their landing] and after about five hours of the toughest trail-breaking imaginable, we halted for a breather. Our advance scouts sent word back that a heavy patrol of Japs was on the trail ahead. We had not expected to encounter the enemy this side of the Matanikau River.”
    Here is where the writing really takes glorious flight: “Captain Rodgers [the company commander, it appears] felt we could try to entrap this patrol by encircling them with a ring of machine gun fire. At the same time being fully aware of the enemy’s reputation for trickery, he decided he would call on the 2nd Marines for help. Calling me to his side, the Captain said, ‘Sergeant, take three machine gun crews up to try and clean up that nest of Japs.’”
    This entire passage is ridiculous. Marine company commanders issue their orders through their lieutenants, not their machine-gun sergeants, unless in extreme circumstances. Why would a Marine officer send out three heavily burdened machine-gun crews in thick jungle country to encircle or ambush anybody, especially a number of enemy troops described as “a heavy patrol”? They would send lighter-burdened, faster-moving riflemen, possibly a four-man fire team or squad, depending on the situation. Once the riflemen located the enemy, the machine guns could be brought up or sited on high ground to support an assault on the enemy with overhead fire. To use heavily laden machine-gun crews as scouts far out ahead of the swifter riflemen goes against reason.
    And no Marine captain would confide to a sergeant that he was about to go outside the chain of command and his own battalion commander to ask yet another regiment, the 2nd Marines, to back him up—especially not with a battalion commander as fearsome as the terrible-tempered Puller.
    The rest of Phyllis’s account has Basilone