Weldon Fader DeLong

Weldon DeLong “was a born leader,” recalled veteran Jim McEnery. “He  was also a crack shot with either a rifle or a pistol, and one of the gutsiest Marines I ever knew – exactly the type of guy you wanted with you when the chips were down… I’d always liked going on patrols with DeLong because he was always so alert to everything around us. Always looking up in trees and behind the bushes. Always checking out anything that looked suspicious. Other guys in my squad were good, too; they just weren’t as good as Weldon DeLong.”

The third day of November 1942 marked the third day of a combined Marine-Army push to the west along Guadalcanal’s northern coast. Ambitious planners hoped to seize the Japanese base at Kokumbona, but an unexpectedly fierce defense by the Imperial Army’s 4th and 124 Infantry Regiments inflicted heavy casualties and stunted progress. The 5th Marines faced an especially tough challenge from Colonel Nomasu Nakaguma’s 4th Infantry entrenched around the base of Point Cruz. Two days of fierce fighting, including an unusual American bayonet charge, finally trapped the surviving Japanese infantry in a constricted pocket west of the Point. Corporal DeLong helped inspire this charge, shouting “Let’s hit ’em!” and attacking a Japanese cannon, killing the crew, and putting the weapon out of action.

The task of eliminating the final resistance fell to the Second Battalion, 5th Marines, with support from the Third Battalion. Item and King Companies weathered a Japanese bayonet charge at 0630 hours. Between 0800 and noon, the Americans inexorably advanced, compressing the defenders in an ever-shrinking perimeter. The fighting grew desperate and personal at close quarters, with both sides using bayonets as well as bullets. Second Lieutenant Paul Moore (F/2/5) recalled that “The skirmishers went on down to the beach and wound up in a bayonet fight with the Japanese, whom they finally pushed back into the sea. Others were killed. There was a terrible slaughter of Japanese and the battle was finally concluded.”

In his memoir Hell In The Pacific: A Marine Rifleman’s Journey from Guadalcanal to Peleliu, Jim McEnery related a hand-to-hand fight at the climax of the action. “Right before we jumped off, I heard [Bill] Landrum tell the Marine next to him, ‘Just give your soul to the Lord, and let’s go!’ We went right through the ditch where the main Jap line had been, but it had already fallen to pieces…. I saw Japs blowing themselves up with grenades and others running like so many scared rabbits.”