Ralph Emerson Smith

PFC Ralph “Smitty” Smith served with F/2/7th Marines for his entire Marine Corps career – first in Cuba, then Samoa, and finally on Guadalcanal. He was under something of a cloud in October 1942; Smith’s platoon leader, Lt. Prentiss M. Hatch, was mortally wounded in an early October firefight, and it was rumored that Smith had accidentally fired the fatal shot.

On 24 October 1942, the Second Battalion, 7th Marines moved into positions along a bare ridge overlooking a steep, wooded gully on one flank and a grass-covered draw on the other. Fox Company was charged with holding the left flank. “Every Marine knew this was the nearest thing to an indefensible position to be found,” recalled Mitchell Paige (H/2/7), whose machine guns were set up to support Fox Company. Constant artillery fire and patrol reports indicated that an attack was soon to come.

A battalion-sized Japanese force hit Fox Company at 2130 and 2300 on 25 October. These attacks were repulsed and the night settled into an uneasy quiet. Japanese signal lights appeared in the trees, and rustling movement indicated another force approaching. The attackers burst out of a treeline just yards away and hurled themselves at Fox Company. “It was a confusing maelstrom, dark shapes crawling everywhere, struggling men falling on each other with bayonets, swords, and all of it filled with violent oaths,” continued Paige. Fox Company held for a time, but the force of the third attack drove them off the ridge and back towards the command post. A counterattack by stragglers and support personnel, plus the machine gunners and Paige himself, finally restored the American line and sent the surviving Japanese troops fleeing into the jungle.

Ralph Smith was among the Fox Company Marines killed in the attack. His cause of death was reported as “gunshot wounds;” no further specifics are available.