No Bended Knee: The Battle for Guadalcanal [Paperback]

USGEN. MERRIL B. TWINING, USMC (Ret.),was a 1923 graduate of the United States Navel Academy. After planning and executing the Lunga defense as operations officer of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, he served with distinction in a wide variety of command and staff assignments before retiring as a four-star general.CHAPTER 1

Amphibious Warfare

Major General J. F. C. Fuller, a distinguished historian of World War II, was of the opinion that “in all probability amphibious operations were the most far-reaching tactical innovation of the War." They were more than far reaching. They were decisive. Most certainly they were not “innovations.” The Siege of Troy, the first battle of any sort in recorded history (1194–1184 b.c.), was a majestic example of the amphibious assault involving 1,000 ships and ten years of bitter warfare on the mainland of Asia Minor. Thereafter the Persians made frequent use of amphibious operations during their centuries of unrelenting effort to destroy the civilization of the Greeks.

In 55 b.c. Julius Caesar displayed a surprising grasp of the art of amphibious warfare in his conquest of Britain. He sent an advance man to examine beaches secretly along the British coast to determine their suitability for landing. During the landing itself Caesar used his warships to provide a rudimentary form of naval gunfire support, protecting the unarmed transports with great flights of arrows and projectiles, the latter hurled ashore by catapults mounted on the warships’ decks. However, he or his advance man made a mistake destined to be repeated by army generals worldwide over the ensuing centuries—he chose a gently shelving beach instead of one steep-to beach. As all Marines and sailors would have known, this caused his transports to ground at a considerable distance

From the beach itself, requiring the troops to struggle ashore, almost helpless under constant attack bylĂB