First 24 Hours of War in the Pacific

Author: Donald J. Young
First 24 Hours of War in the Pacific
Burd Street Press
1998
Format: PDF
Pages: 194
Language: English
Size: 96.1 MB

Military historian Donald J. Young takes the reader to eleven Pacific sites where war is about to change everything. He puts us on doomed Wake Island where Major Devereaux is ordering his Marine bugler to sound "Call to Arms" as an invasion force looms offshore and bombs devestate. We are with more marines in North China, embassy guards, who must surrender or die on the spot. The bugler sounds "Retreat" for one last time and then breaks his bugle across his knee and hurls it away. We are aboard the PanAm flying boat "China Clipper" as it desperately tries to flee Wake Island already under attack. We are on indefensible Guam when an ill-equipped handful of American Marines, mindful that no U.S. Marine unit has ever gone down without a fight, march off to make a stand agasinst an invasion force of 5000. The Marines are armed with 1903 Springfield rifles, two .30 caliber machine guns, and a few.45 sidearms. They are assisted by Insular Guards, native Chamorros who also carry ought three Springfields but theirs are stamped ""Do not shoot. For training purposes only." We are at Clark Field in the Phillipines where B-17s are caught on the ground by aerial raiders. We are abandoning the ill-fated 2100 ton lumber schooner "Cynthia Olsen" torpedoed and sinking off Hawaii, the first U.S. merchantman to be sunk in World War Two but not the last. Reading this book will remind you how lucky we are there can never be another be another Pearl Harbor.