George Howard Grazier

George Grazier was born in State College, Pennsylvania, on 22 April 1921. He spent most of his young life at 125 North Gill Street – a home owned by his grandfather Charles Taylor, a local mail carrier – with his parents, two siblings, and his aunt and uncle. Tragedy hit in 1930 when George’s father, Hobert Ellsworth Grazier, died suddenly at the age of thirty-three. The widowed Madeline (Taylor) Grazier remarried to one Oscar Carter – who also moved in to 125 North Gill – and soon George had a little stepbrother to play with.

After grammar school, George attended State College Area High School. He was exceptionally athletic – participating on the football, volleyball, basketball, and wrestling teams – and also displayed a flair for performance in the school chorus and the senior operetta. His classmates nicknamed him “Gabby” and some swooned at his good looks. “Handsome is as handsome does,” he quipped for the 1940 yearbook.

Gabby Grazier had a year of peacetime to contemplate his future before the attack on Pearl Harbor inspired him to join the Marine Corps.

On 26 January 1942, Grazier traveled to Philadelphia to enlist in the Marine Corps. After his training at Parris Island, he was posted his first active duty assignment: the First Platoon of the First Battalion of the First Regiment of the First Marine Division.

Private Grazier’s immediate commanding officer was Second Lieutenant John Jachym; the young Pennsylvanian became Jachym’s runner. Following training in North Carolina and a stop in New Zealand, Grazier landed on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942.

For his first few days on the ‘Canal, Grazier focused on acclimatizing, staying alive, and running errands for Lieutenant Jachym. August 12 saw his platoon leaving friendly territory to provide security for a surveying team. While the engineers searched for a likely airfield site, the Marines from First Platoon sent out scouts – some of whom returned with worrying news. An American missionary in the village of Tetere reported a Japanese strong point not far away; after the Marines returned to their regiment, further intelligence suggested that the enemy was interested in advancing along the eastern perimeter – perilously close to Henderson Field, the key to the campaign

On the night of 18 August, Captain Charles H. Brush Jr. called Lieutenant Jachym to his command post. How was First Platoon faring after their long march? “The men are fine,” Jachym said. “Good,” said Brush. “We’re going out again to get that machine-gun outfit you told us about. I’m going with you.”[1]

On the morning of 19 August, Captain Brush’s volunteers – Jachym’s First Platoon (helpfully “volunteered” by their lieutenant), plus attached machine gunners and mortarmen prepared to move out. Four Melanesian scouts, under the direction of Corporal Daniel Pule, led the way.^[2] PFC Hubert “Stub” Morse, a BARman from Jachym’s platoon, recalled their departure.

We moved out at first light through the barbed wire entanglements strong along the edge of Alligator Creek, trudged across the sandbar that formed a lagoon there and into the palm grove that followed the shoreline. Birds screeched, non-coms shouted, “Spread out, one shell will get you all!” We could hear other voices from guys in the gun emplacements calling out “Good luck!” and others saying “You’ll be sorry!” Some of us grinned at the secret knowledge that we were sorry already. This would be no practice hike.^[3]

Morse was right. “Patrols were always with our weapons at the ready for many miles,” recalled Corporal Ernie Dobbins.^[4] The Marines slogged through the loose sand along the shoreline; grit got into their boondockers and rubbed their feet raw. Light perspiration turned to drenching sweat, and men cursed and swatted at gnats that buzzed around their eyes. Moving inland to the government track made walking easier, but the heat and insects got worse. “We trudged along cursing the heat, the insects, and the guy who dreamed up the whole damn deal,” said Morse. “By noon we were foot-weary, bone tired, and hungry.”^[5] The village of Papanggu was just ahead; an orange grove offered a perfect place to rest and eat. Morse declared he would march on his hands to get some fresh fruit.

Unbeknownst to the Marines, a Japanese patrol was heading down the path in the opposite direction, “boldly and carelessly” in the words of a Marine report.^[6] This group, part of a detachment under Colonel Kiyoko Ichicki, had recently arrived on Guadalcanal; they carried radios and communication lines to establish an outpost at Alligator Creek. Both parties were ignorant of each other’s presence – but the scouts, born and raised on Guadalcanal, could tell when a stranger was close.

One of the natives in a half-whisper warned us, “Me smell Japs!” We took this warning seriously. He should know, he’s been living with these people for quite a long time, he should know what they smelled like. It never entered into my nostrils at the time. We were sure glad he was there.^[7]

A few seconds later, American and Japanese scouts spotted each other and opened fire. Lieutenant Jachym quickly pulled his platoon off the trail and dispatched Gabby Grazier to find Captain Brush. Grazier hurried back along the path as the woods erupted with the sound of automatic weapons. Running and dodging like a high school footballer, he evaded the enemy fire and found the company commander preparing to deploy the mortars and machine guns.^[8]

Brush decided on a flanking move that would handily trap the Japanese against the water and set about deploying his men. Private Grazier – for reasons no longer known – attached himself to Brush’s headquarters group instead of returning to his platoon.^[9] However, he kept a close eye on the developing fight. The enemy fire seemed to come from everywhere at once; the Japanese, though new to Guadalcanal, were well-trained and dangerous. “Those [Marines] in tangled bush places and dense jungle had a difficult time [determining] where or which direction the enemy was firing,” remarked Corporal Dobbin. “It seemed they were being surrounded everywhere.”^[10] For a brief time, Jachym’s leftmost squads seemed to be in trouble and pinned down.

Gabby Grazier got up and ran out onto the beach. Completely exposed, he tried to suppress the enemy fire. Ichicki’s gunners shifted their attention to the visible target, and Grazier fell dead in the sand as he “recklessly stormed across a tiny creek to get at the Japanese.”^[11] The distraction was just long enough for the Marine squad to move out of danger, and the flanking movement succeeded. In less than an hour, Captain Brush’s men wiped out most of the Japanese patrol. A few survivors escaped to report the disaster.

With a cache of important intelligence documents and fine Japanese radios – and three wounded men to treat – Captain Brush prepared to head back to the Marine perimeter. First, however, he had to addend to his dead Marines. Private Grazier, Private John C. Buckhalt, and PFC Jack H. Gardner were buried in shallow graves; Brush had his men leave the boondocker-clad feet exposed “to aid in the anticipated recovery effort.”^[12] Their friends bade a somber, tearful farewell. “Someone said we made arrangements in a native village nearby to have our dead temporarily buried,” said Stub Morse, a close friend of both Buckhalt and Gardner. “I really don’t remember that.^[13]

I didn’t have to say much about the patrol. The guys around us could read the story in the face of every man who came back. Later, when I tried to recall the details of the fight, they seemed to be fragmented and jumbled together in little pieces of terror and reality. It didn’t matter, I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. It is seared into my memory with blood, cordite, and sorrow.^[14]

At the time of the patrol, Captain Brush’s men lacked a reliable map of Guadalcanal and were unable to accurately plot the location of the graves. They expected to return within a few days – but subsequent events, including the infamous attack and slaughter of the Ichicki Detachment a few days later, rendered such an expedition out of the question. The three Marines were simply reported as buried “in the Hills” with no further explanation.

In 1947 and again in 1949, search and recovery teams from the 604^th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company attempted to locate the bodies of Grazier, Gardner, and Buckhalt. They had an additional clue from the Buckhalt family – a photo of a grave marker and a set of cryptic instructions.

At the first bend in river approximately 200 to 250 yards inland, grave was about 10 yards from river bank on right side going upstream. Grave was marked by white cross made out of coral and placed flat across center of it. There was also an identification tag tied to a bayonet.

The source for the family’s information is not known – and, as the GRS men tersely pointed out, the name of the river was not given.^[15] After making a few general searches along several rivers, they gave up and declared the remains non-recoverable.

However, they were not the first troops to attempt the recovery of remains in the area. Immediately after the firefight in 1942, Ichicki’s men went in search of their own dead friends. As they prepared the men for burial, they noted:

…the bodies of three men that were much larger than the others and had been wrapped in ponchos. When they examined the remains more closely in the light, they realized that these were the corpses of American Marines, not Japanese. They concluded that the Marine commander had left them behind in making a “hasty return” to the Marines’ defensive position.^[16]

The ultimate disposition of Grazier, Gardner, and Buckhalt’s remains is not currently known. It is believed that they still lie in isolated graves along the north coast of Guadalcanal, in the vicinity of Koli Point.

CENOTAPHS
Manila American Cemetery and Memorial

[1] Eric Hammel, Guadalcanal: Starvation Island (New York: Crown Publishing, 1987), 162.
[2] Corporal Ernie Dobbins (A/1/1) estimated “approximately 45 to 48 Marines, [plus] 4 natives including Corporal Daniel Pule.” Historian William Bartsch claims 65 (Jachym’s entire platoon, plus 11 mortarmen and 12 machine gunners from D/1/1. (Barstch, Victory Fever on Guadalcanal, 95)
[3] Hugh Morse & George Head, A-1-1 Pearl Harbor to Peleliu (A-1-1 Book Committee, 1993), 32
[4] Ibid., 103.
[5] Ibid., 104
[6] 1^st Marine Division, Headquarters, “Division Commander’s Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Phase III: Organization of the Lunga Point Defenses, 10 August – 21 August,” 13 July 1943, (RG 127, NARA), 10.
[7] Ernie Dobbins, quoted in Morse & Head A-1-1, 103.
[8] William H. Bartsch, Victory Fever on Guadalcanal: Japan’s First Land Defeat of World War II (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 99.
[9] Ibid. After conversing with Jachym, Bartsch notes “Grazier would not be the one to pass the order,” but it is not clear why Grazier stayed with Brush’s group.
[10] Dobbin, 103.
[11] Hammel, Guadalcanal, 163.
[12] Bartsch, 107.
[13] Morse & Head, 33.
[14] Ibid., 34
[15] The river is likely the Ngalimbiu (or Malimbiu in 1940s records) based on the direction and destination of the patrol.
[16] Bartsch, 114.