His morning toilette completed, he picked up a U.S. Rifle, Caliber.30-06, M1 that was beside his bed (one of the few M1s on Guadalcanal). It had a leather strap, and the strap had two spare eight-round clips attached to it.

The M1 rifle (called the Garand, after its inventor) was viewed by most Marines as a Mickey Mouse piece of shit, inferior in every way to the U.S. Rifle, Caliber. 30-06, M1903 (called the Springfield, after the U.S. Army Arsenal where it was manufactured). Every Marine had been trained with a Springfield at either Parris Island or San Diego.

Major Stecker disagreed. In his professional judgment, the Garand was the finest military rifle yet developed.

Before the war, as Sergeant Major Stecker, he participated in the testing of the weapon at the Army's Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Georgia. And he concluded then that if he ever had to go to war again, he would arm himself with the Garand. Not only was it at least as accurate as the Springfield, but it was self-loading. You could fire the eight cartridges in its en bloc clip as fast as you could pull the trigger. And then, when the clip was empty, the weapon automatically ejected it and left the action open for the rapid insertion of a fresh one. The Marine Corps' beloved Springfield required the manipulation of its bolt after each shot, and its magazine held only five cartridges.

Although there were in those days fewer than two hundred Garands in Marine Corps stocks, it had not been difficult for the sergeant major of the U.S. Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, to arrange to have one assigned to him. For one thing, he was the power behind the U.S. Marine Corps Rifle Team, and for another, sergeants major of the pre-war Marine Corps generally got whatever they thought they needed, no questions asked.

When Sergeant Major Stecker was called to active duty as a Captain, USMC Reserve, he briefly considered turning the Garand in.... He decided against it. If he turned the Garand in, he reasoned, it would almost certainly spend the war in a rifle rack at Quantico. If he kept it, the odds were that it would be put to its intended use-bringing accurate fire to bear upon the enemy.

By the time the 1st Marine Division reached the South Pacific, Jack (NMI) Stecker was a major.... He had in no way changed his opinion about the Garand rifle-far to the contrary. Although there were few in the 1st Marines who felt safe teasing Major Stecker about anything, three or four brave souls felt bold enough to tease him about his rifle. The last man to do it was Brigadier General Lewis T. Harris, the Assistant Division Commander. They were then on the transport en route to Guadalcanal.

General Harris was a second lieutenant in France in 1917 at the time Sergeant Stecker, then nineteen, earned the Medal of Honor. And they had remained friends since. General Harris, for instance, was the man who talked Stecker into accepting a reserve commission in the first place. And it was Harris who later arranged his promotion to major and his being given command of Second of the Fifth-against a good deal of pressure from the regular officer corps, who believed that while there was a place for commissioned ex-enlisted men in the wartime Corps, it was not in positions of command.

On the transport, General Harris looked at Stecker and observed solemnly: "I'm willing to close my eyes to officers who prefer to carry a rifle in addition to the prescribed arm," which was the.45 Colt pistol, "but I'm having trouble overlooking an officer who arms himself with a Mickey Mouse piece that will probably fall apart the first time it's fired."

Stecker raised his eyes to meet the General's. "May the Major respectfully suggest that the General go fuck himself?"

They were alone in the General's cabin, and they went back together a long way. The General laughed and offered Stecker another sample of what the bottle's label described as prescription mouthwash.

The comments about Jack (NMI) Stecker's Mickey Mouse rifle died out after the 2nd Battalion of the Fifth Marines went ashore on Tulagi (at about the same time the bulk of the Division was going ashore on Guadalcanal, twenty miles away). The word spread that the 2nd Battalion's commanding officer, standing in the open and firing offhand, had put rounds in the heads of two Japanese two hundred yards away.

Jack Stecker put his helmet on his head and slung the Garand over his shoulder.

"I'm going to have a look around," he said to the G-3 sergeant.

The field telephone rang as he crossed the room. As Stecker reached the entrance, the G-3 sergeant called his name. When Stecker turned, he held out the telephone to him.

Stecker took the telephone, pushed the butterfly switch, and spoke his name.

"Yes, Sir," he said, and then "No, Sir," and then "Thank you, Sir, I'll be waiting."

He handed the telephone back to the sergeant.

"The look around will have to wait. I'm having breakfast with The General. He's sending his jeep for me."

There were several general officers on the island of Guadalcanal, but The General was Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift, who commanded the First Marine Division.

"Whatever it is, Sir," the G-3 sergeant said, "we didn't do it."

"I don't think The General would believe that, Sergeant, whatever it is," Stecker said, and walked out of the command post.

[TWO]

The 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Fifth Marines, First Marine Division, had come ashore near Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, on 7 August. Simultaneously, the 1st Marine Raider Battalion and the 2nd Battalion of the Fifth Marines had landed on Tulagi Island, twenty miles away; and the 1st Marine Parachute Battalion on the tiny island of Gavutu, two miles from Tulagi.

This operation was less the first American counterattack against the Japanese-since that would have meant the establishment on Guadalcanal of a force that could reasonably be expected to overwhelm the Japanese there-than an act of desperation.

From a variety of sources, Intelligence had learned that the Japanese would in the near future complete the construction of an airfield near Lunga Point on the north side of the island. If it became operational, Japanese aircraft would dominate the area: New Guinea would almost certainly fall. And an invasion of Australia would become likely.

On the other hand, if the Japanese airfield were to fall into American hands, the situation would be reversed. For American aircraft could then strike at Japanese shipping lanes, and at Japanese bases, especially those at Rabaul, on the island of New Britain. A Japanese invasion of Australia would be rendered impossible, all of New Guinea could be retaken, and the first step would be made on what publicists were already calling "The March to Japan."

General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Area, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, very seldom agreed on anything; but they agreed on this: that the risks involved in taking Guadalcanal had to be accepted. And so the decision to go ahead with the attack was made.