2RHPZ
06-27-2004, 05:37 PM
Scouting Guadalcanal
A 19-year-old from upstate New York joined the Marines to see the world. What he saw first was a small Pacific island under fire that would quickly test his mettle.
Interview by Kathleen D. Valenzi
On August 7, 1942, 15 U.S. Navy transports landed the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, inaugurating the first American land offensive of World War II. The objective was to gain control of a Japanese air base that was under construction, thus denying the Japanese a closer vantage point from which to launch air attacks against Allied supply ships traveling to Australia and New Zealand.
On board one of those transports, George Elliott, was Corporal Michael C. Capraro from Utica, N.Y. Like many young men, he had joined the Marine Corps in 1940 for the steady paycheck and the opportunity to see the world. What he hadn't anticipated, however, was that in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, on an island only 90 miles long and 30 miles wide, he would discover his capacity for courage and leadership. In four months' time, his demonstrated competence and coolness under fire would earn him promotions to sergeant, then platoon sergeant, and finally, a battlefield commission as second lieutenant at the age of 20.
Today, Capraro, a successful commercial land salesman in Northern Virginia, doesn't mind talking about his activities at Guadalcanal, and recently described them to Kathleen D. Valenzi for Military History. But don't call him a hero. According to this retired U.S. Marine Corps major, whose subsequent careers as a newspaper reporter, diplomat and CIA officer eventually took him all over the globe, Guadalcanal was a school that tested everybody. He just happened to get high marks.
Military History: Tell me about your activities from the time you enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1940 until the time you went ashore at Guadalcanal in 1942.
Capraro: In my early stages in the Marine Corps, I took some map-reading courses, and it turns out that I had a knack for it. I started becoming interested in maps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back in the days when it was mostly jungle. The Marines had just started expanding the base down there, and I was detailed to a mapping group. Every day, we went out and made field sketches and maps. In the process, I acquired the vital basic skill of map reading. The Marine Corps did not stress map reading in its officers' schools. Many of the officers I knew at that time couldn't read maps. If they found someone who had some skill at map reading, they came quickly to rely on him.
MH: Tell us about landing at Guadalcanal.
Capraro: I was only 19 years old when we set sail from San Francisco. We didn't know where we were going. There was not only a lack of communication -- we had no radios, no newspapers, and mail was 30 to 40 days late -- but also a lot of uncertainty. The one thing that marked this whole critical campaign was uncertainty as to its outcome. It was being fought in the air, on land, and on sea, and a loss of any one of those battles could have meant the end for the others. So we lived off of rumors and scuttlebutt. After arriving off Guadalcanal in August 1942, we went ashore while a war went on in the sky. About 20 minutes after I left my ship, a Japanese dive bomber crashed into its bridge and set it afire. It later sank.
MH: What was your job?
Capraro: I was chief of intelligence for 2-1-1, 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division. We set up and manned observation posts. We also patrolled daily to scout for the enemy.
MH: So you used your map-reading skills on Guadalcanal?
Capraro: Yes. When we went ashore at Guadalcanal, it was like going back to school. All we had by way of maps were barely legible aerial photographs taken from a vertical angle. The fields showed up as white, and the jungle showed up as black. But you had no feeling for topography--the third dimension. Being from an industrial town, I had no background in dense jungle terrain, but suddenly I had to move in the forest quietly, read the stars and other signs to find my location. I remember one time, we'd been patrolling all day, and every once in a while, we'd stop to take a cigarette break around the smoking lamp. It was getting dark, and the company commander pulled me aside and said, "Cappy, where the hell are we?" I took the map and said, "Right there, sir." "How the hell do you know that?" he asked. I bent over and picked up one of the cigarette butts that we'd left on the ground earlier that day. It was as simple as that. I had followed the cigarette butts back.
MH: How did you overcome the lack of good maps?
Capraro: Principally through scouting and patrol. You've got to understand intelligence, which is just a fancy word for the information that a commander needs to make his plans for defense or offense. Essentially, it is a question of knowing the enemy -- his plans and intentions, his capabilities, his size, his strength. Also, it entails an understanding of terrain. In this day and age, intelligence has been revolutionized by high-tech advances. We have satellites in the skies that not only can tell what the enemy is doing and where he's doing it but also can penetrate jungle canopies through infrared photography and produce first-rate maps. The only thing we still can't do is read the enemy's mind. Fifty-some years ago, we were handicapped at Guadalcanal because we didn't have good maps to help us. The way we overcame that handicap was to constantly patrol our sector of the island. Scouting and patrol told us where the enemy lay, his probable routes of approach to our lines, his strengths and his weaknesses.
MH: But what if you didn't find any signs of the enemy?
Capraro: It was equally important to go out and not make contact with the enemy, because even negative information was valuable. It told us where he was not, so that we could move our own forces accordingly.
MH: So you spent most of your time scouting?
Capraro: Yes, and because I was a scout, I also was always put in the position of being on the point on patrols. In the jungle, you generally move in single file. As the scout, I was the man they were following. I had the responsibility not only to lead the men out but also to lead them back.
MH: Tell us about your first night on the "Canal."
Capraro: The first day we went ashore on Guadalcanal, we had no idea what we were going to run into. We spent the day hacking our way through bamboo and thicket. Darkness came, and we were fully expecting the Japanese to appear. While they didn't, it was still my first experience with death. We had put up a security perimeter, and the first man we posted was a young corporal who was very new. We heard a shot and discovered that our hospital corpsman had been accidentally shot by this young corporal, who had gotten nervous. The corporal was weeping and wailing because of what he had done. Then my commanding officer approached me. "Cappy," he called me, "something awful has happened." "What?" I asked, expecting him to tell me about the shooting. "I've lost my wife's picture." Would you believe that in the damn darkness we were crawling around looking for a picture of this beautiful woman he had married?
MH: The picture concerned him more than the shooting?
Capraro: I've seen this a number of times in combat. The officer, who soon returned home to the States, was so love struck that it rendered him helpless. Love can make cowards of men, married men in particular. As a leader, you come to recognize that. I suspect that one of the reasons why my commanding officers leaned on me so much was because I was young and unattached. The psychology of warfare -- what goes on in people's minds -- figures into the events on the battlefield. If you've got a wife and three kids, you're not going to be volunteering every day to patrol out in the bush.
MH: What were your patrols like?
Capraro: More often than not, we patrolled chest-deep through water in marshes and swamps. There were all sorts of animals in the jungle, and numerous mosquitoes -- we had no protection from malaria. We slept on the ground. We were at the end of the line in terms of supplies.
MH: Being on the point must have taken a lot of courage.
Capraro: I'm uncomfortable talking about courage. Let's just say that the patrol would get to an open field in the jungle, and much too often the officer in charge of the patrol would say: "Capraro? Go out into the field and see if you can draw some enemy fire." And that's what I had to do. Quickly, though, I got to the point that I said: "I'll never do this again! I'm going to climb a damn tree and look!" Or, I would leave the company for a while and reconnoiter the jungle on the other side. After a while, the company commanders began to understand that I was developing the skills of an Indian scout. They trusted me. More often than not, they welcomed me on their patrols.
MH: Scouting did involve a lot of risk, though, didn't it?
Capraro: It was not without a great deal of stress. It's like taking a policeman to a house with an armed criminal inside and telling him to go inside. Every time you went on patrol you were going into the unknown. But I volunteered because I had developed friendships with most of the people I went out with. We came to rely on one another. Also, I was allergic to air raids. On Guadalcanal, there were air raids constantly. I got bounced out of my foxhole once by the concussion of an exploding bomb, and I decided I would rather be out beating the bush, where I could watch the air raids come over. I've never told anybody this before, but I had decided that if I had to die, I would rather do it on patrol where I had some control, rather than just huddle in a foxhole and helplessly watch the bombers come over.
MH: You must have felt a tremendous responsibility for the men on your patrols.
Capraro: Most company commanders welcomed me on their patrols, because if something happened to me on point, it still wasn't one of their men. There was one commander, named Marvin Rockmore, who would take me aside before each patrol. I'd wince when he would say it, but he'd say, "My God, Cappy, you're taking us out, and I'm putting the lives of my company in your hands." I dreaded those words.
MH: How many patrols did you make?
Capraro: I must have made 30 to 40 patrols between August and December of 1942.
MH: Does any one patrol stand out in your mind?
Capraro: On one patrol I was on the point again. We came to an embankment that the patrol had to cross. I slowly worked my way up the embankment, and when I got up to the top, I found myself looking straight into the eyes of a Japanese soldier. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He screamed and fell backward down his side of the embankment; I screamed and fell all the way back down the hill. There were many incidents like that. It was horrible sometimes. I'd come so close to the enemy that I could see them sitting on their latrines. It really required a great deal of skill and stealth.
MH: Did you have any time for recreation?
Capraro: For recreation we used to watch the aerial dogfights. We were bombarded at night by cruisers, and once by battleships. Most of the time we kept busy. As I said, the uncertainty was awful. All the time, we were in the dark as to what the outcome was going to be, how long it was going to take. Time was suspended. It was like we'd been put in a dark room without any idea of when we'd be let back out.
A 19-year-old from upstate New York joined the Marines to see the world. What he saw first was a small Pacific island under fire that would quickly test his mettle.
Interview by Kathleen D. Valenzi
On August 7, 1942, 15 U.S. Navy transports landed the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, inaugurating the first American land offensive of World War II. The objective was to gain control of a Japanese air base that was under construction, thus denying the Japanese a closer vantage point from which to launch air attacks against Allied supply ships traveling to Australia and New Zealand.
On board one of those transports, George Elliott, was Corporal Michael C. Capraro from Utica, N.Y. Like many young men, he had joined the Marine Corps in 1940 for the steady paycheck and the opportunity to see the world. What he hadn't anticipated, however, was that in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, on an island only 90 miles long and 30 miles wide, he would discover his capacity for courage and leadership. In four months' time, his demonstrated competence and coolness under fire would earn him promotions to sergeant, then platoon sergeant, and finally, a battlefield commission as second lieutenant at the age of 20.
Today, Capraro, a successful commercial land salesman in Northern Virginia, doesn't mind talking about his activities at Guadalcanal, and recently described them to Kathleen D. Valenzi for Military History. But don't call him a hero. According to this retired U.S. Marine Corps major, whose subsequent careers as a newspaper reporter, diplomat and CIA officer eventually took him all over the globe, Guadalcanal was a school that tested everybody. He just happened to get high marks.
Military History: Tell me about your activities from the time you enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1940 until the time you went ashore at Guadalcanal in 1942.
Capraro: In my early stages in the Marine Corps, I took some map-reading courses, and it turns out that I had a knack for it. I started becoming interested in maps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back in the days when it was mostly jungle. The Marines had just started expanding the base down there, and I was detailed to a mapping group. Every day, we went out and made field sketches and maps. In the process, I acquired the vital basic skill of map reading. The Marine Corps did not stress map reading in its officers' schools. Many of the officers I knew at that time couldn't read maps. If they found someone who had some skill at map reading, they came quickly to rely on him.
MH: Tell us about landing at Guadalcanal.
Capraro: I was only 19 years old when we set sail from San Francisco. We didn't know where we were going. There was not only a lack of communication -- we had no radios, no newspapers, and mail was 30 to 40 days late -- but also a lot of uncertainty. The one thing that marked this whole critical campaign was uncertainty as to its outcome. It was being fought in the air, on land, and on sea, and a loss of any one of those battles could have meant the end for the others. So we lived off of rumors and scuttlebutt. After arriving off Guadalcanal in August 1942, we went ashore while a war went on in the sky. About 20 minutes after I left my ship, a Japanese dive bomber crashed into its bridge and set it afire. It later sank.
MH: What was your job?
Capraro: I was chief of intelligence for 2-1-1, 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division. We set up and manned observation posts. We also patrolled daily to scout for the enemy.
MH: So you used your map-reading skills on Guadalcanal?
Capraro: Yes. When we went ashore at Guadalcanal, it was like going back to school. All we had by way of maps were barely legible aerial photographs taken from a vertical angle. The fields showed up as white, and the jungle showed up as black. But you had no feeling for topography--the third dimension. Being from an industrial town, I had no background in dense jungle terrain, but suddenly I had to move in the forest quietly, read the stars and other signs to find my location. I remember one time, we'd been patrolling all day, and every once in a while, we'd stop to take a cigarette break around the smoking lamp. It was getting dark, and the company commander pulled me aside and said, "Cappy, where the hell are we?" I took the map and said, "Right there, sir." "How the hell do you know that?" he asked. I bent over and picked up one of the cigarette butts that we'd left on the ground earlier that day. It was as simple as that. I had followed the cigarette butts back.
MH: How did you overcome the lack of good maps?
Capraro: Principally through scouting and patrol. You've got to understand intelligence, which is just a fancy word for the information that a commander needs to make his plans for defense or offense. Essentially, it is a question of knowing the enemy -- his plans and intentions, his capabilities, his size, his strength. Also, it entails an understanding of terrain. In this day and age, intelligence has been revolutionized by high-tech advances. We have satellites in the skies that not only can tell what the enemy is doing and where he's doing it but also can penetrate jungle canopies through infrared photography and produce first-rate maps. The only thing we still can't do is read the enemy's mind. Fifty-some years ago, we were handicapped at Guadalcanal because we didn't have good maps to help us. The way we overcame that handicap was to constantly patrol our sector of the island. Scouting and patrol told us where the enemy lay, his probable routes of approach to our lines, his strengths and his weaknesses.
MH: But what if you didn't find any signs of the enemy?
Capraro: It was equally important to go out and not make contact with the enemy, because even negative information was valuable. It told us where he was not, so that we could move our own forces accordingly.
MH: So you spent most of your time scouting?
Capraro: Yes, and because I was a scout, I also was always put in the position of being on the point on patrols. In the jungle, you generally move in single file. As the scout, I was the man they were following. I had the responsibility not only to lead the men out but also to lead them back.
MH: Tell us about your first night on the "Canal."
Capraro: The first day we went ashore on Guadalcanal, we had no idea what we were going to run into. We spent the day hacking our way through bamboo and thicket. Darkness came, and we were fully expecting the Japanese to appear. While they didn't, it was still my first experience with death. We had put up a security perimeter, and the first man we posted was a young corporal who was very new. We heard a shot and discovered that our hospital corpsman had been accidentally shot by this young corporal, who had gotten nervous. The corporal was weeping and wailing because of what he had done. Then my commanding officer approached me. "Cappy," he called me, "something awful has happened." "What?" I asked, expecting him to tell me about the shooting. "I've lost my wife's picture." Would you believe that in the damn darkness we were crawling around looking for a picture of this beautiful woman he had married?
MH: The picture concerned him more than the shooting?
Capraro: I've seen this a number of times in combat. The officer, who soon returned home to the States, was so love struck that it rendered him helpless. Love can make cowards of men, married men in particular. As a leader, you come to recognize that. I suspect that one of the reasons why my commanding officers leaned on me so much was because I was young and unattached. The psychology of warfare -- what goes on in people's minds -- figures into the events on the battlefield. If you've got a wife and three kids, you're not going to be volunteering every day to patrol out in the bush.
MH: What were your patrols like?
Capraro: More often than not, we patrolled chest-deep through water in marshes and swamps. There were all sorts of animals in the jungle, and numerous mosquitoes -- we had no protection from malaria. We slept on the ground. We were at the end of the line in terms of supplies.
MH: Being on the point must have taken a lot of courage.
Capraro: I'm uncomfortable talking about courage. Let's just say that the patrol would get to an open field in the jungle, and much too often the officer in charge of the patrol would say: "Capraro? Go out into the field and see if you can draw some enemy fire." And that's what I had to do. Quickly, though, I got to the point that I said: "I'll never do this again! I'm going to climb a damn tree and look!" Or, I would leave the company for a while and reconnoiter the jungle on the other side. After a while, the company commanders began to understand that I was developing the skills of an Indian scout. They trusted me. More often than not, they welcomed me on their patrols.
MH: Scouting did involve a lot of risk, though, didn't it?
Capraro: It was not without a great deal of stress. It's like taking a policeman to a house with an armed criminal inside and telling him to go inside. Every time you went on patrol you were going into the unknown. But I volunteered because I had developed friendships with most of the people I went out with. We came to rely on one another. Also, I was allergic to air raids. On Guadalcanal, there were air raids constantly. I got bounced out of my foxhole once by the concussion of an exploding bomb, and I decided I would rather be out beating the bush, where I could watch the air raids come over. I've never told anybody this before, but I had decided that if I had to die, I would rather do it on patrol where I had some control, rather than just huddle in a foxhole and helplessly watch the bombers come over.
MH: You must have felt a tremendous responsibility for the men on your patrols.
Capraro: Most company commanders welcomed me on their patrols, because if something happened to me on point, it still wasn't one of their men. There was one commander, named Marvin Rockmore, who would take me aside before each patrol. I'd wince when he would say it, but he'd say, "My God, Cappy, you're taking us out, and I'm putting the lives of my company in your hands." I dreaded those words.
MH: How many patrols did you make?
Capraro: I must have made 30 to 40 patrols between August and December of 1942.
MH: Does any one patrol stand out in your mind?
Capraro: On one patrol I was on the point again. We came to an embankment that the patrol had to cross. I slowly worked my way up the embankment, and when I got up to the top, I found myself looking straight into the eyes of a Japanese soldier. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He screamed and fell backward down his side of the embankment; I screamed and fell all the way back down the hill. There were many incidents like that. It was horrible sometimes. I'd come so close to the enemy that I could see them sitting on their latrines. It really required a great deal of skill and stealth.
MH: Did you have any time for recreation?
Capraro: For recreation we used to watch the aerial dogfights. We were bombarded at night by cruisers, and once by battleships. Most of the time we kept busy. As I said, the uncertainty was awful. All the time, we were in the dark as to what the outcome was going to be, how long it was going to take. Time was suspended. It was like we'd been put in a dark room without any idea of when we'd be let back out.