Kindle Notes & Highlights
Martin Clemens was now the sole British official on Guadalcanal—a position that was anything but enviable. He was not only supposed to keep the flag flying as the colonial world crumbled around him, but in taking over the Aola station, he also assumed another responsibility that would hold him on Guadalcanal indefinitely. He automatically became a link in the Islands Coastwatching Service. Developed by the Royal Australian Navy after World War I, the Service aimed to establish a network of observers who might keep an eye on the country’s vast unguarded coast in case of war.
Control of the Solomons meant control of the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, and that in turn meant control of the approaches to Brisbane and Sydney.
Every once in a while a man discovers he can go beyond the limits he sets for himself—can endure more than he ever dreamed he could—and
Vandegrift consoled himself with the old theatrical maxim that a bad dress rehearsal means a good opening night.
Sometimes the good shepherd had to do more than look out for his flock; he must take a stick to the wolf invading the fold.
Then he thought again of the shepherd and his flock. The truly good shepherd should not be content simply to use the stick when the wolf attacks. Then it might be too late. If he knows the wolf is on the prowl, the truly good shepherd will go after him before he strikes.
He did not die gloriously; he died taking a leak.
Perilous hardship had brought most of the men closer to God than they had ever been before.
The war had been turned around, and it all began in the Solomons. If Midway ended forever any chance of a Japanese victory, it was the Allied seizure of Guadalcanal and the recapture of the Solomons that started Tokyo down the road to final defeat.
Admiral Halsey summed it up well when he later observed, “The Coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific.”
