Marvin Francis Goins

Corporal Marvin Goins served with Company B, First Battalion, 8th Marines during the Guadalcanal campaign and in the battle for Tarawa.

At midday on 20 November 1943, BLT 1-8 climbed over the sides of their transport ships and boarded LCVPs in Tarawa lagoon. They anticipated imminent landing orders, but due to the desperate situation on the beach were held offshore in their little boats, bobbing in the waves for the rest of the day and a very long night. Early on 21 November, they were ordered to land on Betio’s Beach Red 2.

At 0615, the first waves of 1-8 rushed down the ramps and into the breaking surf on a coral reef some 500 yards from shore. Although friendly troops held the water’s edge, they “immediately came under heavy machine gun fire from both flanks.” Corporal Goins survived the long walk ashore, and lived through the balance of D-plus-One. The following day, when a Japanese bunker held up his platoon, Goins gathered TNT blocks and Bangalore torpedoes and crawled forward alone. Despite heavy fire, he managed to blow up the enemy emplacement and put it out of action. This act would earn him the Silver Star Medal.

Unfortunately, Corporal Goins’s gallantry did not mean the end of the fighting – later that day, he was fatally wounded in action. No eyewitness accounts of his death are currently known.