During the Battle for Henderson’s Field in the hellacious Guadalcanal campaign, Wiki has the following, describing the perimeter where 700 Marines were covering 2500 yards;
Responding to the Japanese capture of part of the ridgeline, Major Odell M. Conoley—Hanneken’s battalion executive officer—quickly gathered a counterattack unit of 17 men, including communications specialists, messmen, a cook, and a bandsman. Conoley’s scratch force was joined by elements of Hanneken’s Company G, Company C, and a few unwounded survivors from Company F and attacked the Japanese before they could consolidate their positions on top of the ridge. By 06:00, Conoley’s force had pushed the Japanese back off the ridge, effectively ending Oka’s attack. The Marines counted 98 Japanese bodies on the ridge and 200 more in the ravine in front of it. Hanneken’s unit suffered 14 killed and 32 wounded.
I don’t have access to the references for this excerpt.
I know that it is a point of honor and purpose that every Marine is a rifleman first, whatever other MOS he has.
I can only think that a Marine Band member–surely a despised assignment when civilians, let alone Marines, would be wretched if not fighting, would be on the island at all because the whole damn MOS was dissolved previously as manpower decisions before the general campaign.
The dire nature of the situation and re-assigning the messmate and cook I understand.
Not a Marine, but this is a book, G.I. Jive by a man who was a bandsman in the Army, and who was sent to New Guinea.
I’ve not read the book, and I’ve no idea what the Marines would do with a bandsman in a place like Guadalcanal. Blow “Reveille” and “Retreat” every day? I gather from reading the blurbs about G.I. Jive, that he and his cohorts were helpful for maintaining morale. The section of John Miller Jr.'s, Guadalcanal: The First Offensive mentions headquarters company personnel attached to Conoley’s makeshift counterattack group. Perhaps the bandsman was attached there?
I can’t find what the current table of organization for a Marine infantry battalion was at the time. Everything I just found was 1943 or 1944 published T/Os. I’ll take it as fact that the entire MOS was eliminated prior to that battle.
Commanders have quite a bit of authority to use the troops provided to them by that centralized manning document in ways that aren’t covered by that centralized Table of Organization. They can and do decide to assign troops to different duties to fulfill unit, and their, priorities. If the battalion commander wanted a bugler or a small battalion band he may have had one. That could be personnel that had previously been qualified as a bandsman or enough civilian experience to do the job without formal training. Any given Marine may well have performed other duties that matched what the T/O said at other times. He may not have. Someone who’s most visible duties were playing an instrument may well have been described as a bandsman in something like an after action report. That doesn’t mean it’s technically correct. He may more accurately have been a personnel clerk, mechanic, cook, etc. by the T/O.
There’s lots of room for error in assuming that everything in the military accurately matches labels assigned or terms used in reports filed later. My acting company motor sergeant during my second command, when most of my motor section was deployed to Iraq wasn’t actually a mechanic. He was an 88M (Motor Transport Operator aka truck driver.) He was there because he was the best person for the job and the HHC Commander let me poach from support platoon to fill the need. I did refer to him as my motor sergeant. I would have referred to him that way in post-battle after action reports if we’d deployed with him in that role. Reality can be a lot more complex than the labels IME.
My dad managed to avoid being at Guadalcanal, but he was in a band pre-war. In everyday life pre-war, bands were still being used instead of radios and mobile phones. Your security detail didn’t have ear-buds: they knew when the President came in because the band played “Hail to the Chief”. They didn’t know to evacuate the public because of an announcement over the public-address system: they heard the “fire” melody played by the band. In combat you ordered your troops to take-cover by playing “take-cover”, and you ordered them to attack by playing “attack”.
I imagine that this was all irrelevant at Guadalcanal – except that the Japanese had fatal communications errors indicating that whatever their radio system was, it didn’t work. And military command notoriously depends on out-of-date tactics and strategy, and sensible command strategy is to have proven back-up systems to new technology.
I reckon a bandsman was a vanity role at the direction of the commanding officer. But underlying that would have been a value equation.
To clarify, yes that account in the Army’s official history of the Guadalcanal Campaign says
" Maj. Odell M. Conoley, a Marine staff officer, leading headquarters personnel, special weapons troops, bandsmen, and one platoon of the 1st Marines, hastily contrived a counterattack and drove the Japanese off the ridge.92"
And that’s presumably the source for a lot of other secondary sources saying this. However footnote 92 is to the Marine official history, but as mentioned previously the currently existing edition of that work at least does not mention these bandsmen. The footnote also references the 1st Marines Annex to the overall report “Division Commanders Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation Phase V” which is one of the key primary sources to the campaign from USMC side. I have that report though and the referenced section only mentions 1st Marines (regiment) personnel, not 7th Marines bandsmen.
Anyway, there were Marine bands in combat units in the Pacific in WWII at either regimental or division (not battalion) level and they are specifically mentioned in either the USMC official history and/or contemporary reports in other cases. Their typical combat mission seems to have been as stretcher bearers, but they were also sometimes used along with other service personnel as defense detachments for Regt/Div level command posts against all around Japanese attack and infiltration.
Brilliant posts, thank you all, in three areas (makes a great thread): the fact (in the absence of corroborating evidence of Marine T/O, but attested to for in the 7th, but supplied by a reputable scholar); the context(s); and the attention to sourcing and bibliographical method.
And Becks, respect to your family. As we know (and I put in OP), it is the Marine’s proud credit that service in shooting people who need to be shot comes before embouchure. Which reminds me, the use of trumpets in US WWII campaigns as more than reveille and command ceremonies is something I never thought.
Something about bagpipes in Normandy rings a bell (as it were). But its signal, braying and loud, was “only” a blast of morale.
My apologies for posting something that doesn’t relate directly to the question. I just wanted to say that a dear older friend of mine who died several years ago was a Marine who fought at Guadalcanal. It was his first battle, and he said he learned there not to make friends because they got blown away on either side of him. He had a few hair-raising stories.
I have a photo of him and the rest of the128th Platoon when they graduated from basic in October, 1941. There are 56 of them, all fresh-faced youngsters. Only 7 survived the war.