Shots Fired in Anger - 09/16/19
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I just finished up this book, and I would recommend it to my fellow campers. John B. George was a Army rifleman at Guadacanal. He had been a civilian marksman before the war, and took up sniping before there was a formal program for it. The first half of the book is his account of his days on Guadacanal. The last half of the book is a commentary on the Japanese and American arms that were were available to the combatants. The memoir is a slow starter, but heats up wonderfully after he gets off the beach. The last half is a gem if you are a rifle looney.
This was the first book about Guadacanal that was not about the Marines. What I did not realize was that after the Marines started to pull out was when the real killing of Japanese began under the auspices of the US Army and its vast resources of infantry and artillery. George doesn't try to minimalize the Marine's contribution or sacrifice. It's just that, after the tide turned, the Japanese were blasted and shot wholesale. This was the part that constituted George's experience.
George gets down in the weeds on descriptions and comparisons-- right down to which side had better ammunition crates.
One of the issues he covers is the M1 Carbine vs the Garand. His assessments of both weapons is lengthy and inciteful. Bottom line: the Garand was able to do far more damage and was able to penetrate the Japanese concealment much better than the Carbine. The carbine was superior to the 45 pistol in all but its use in foxholes at night.
The 1911 was too heavy. He wished he'd had a revolver to protect himself in the foxholes.
His beefs with the M1 Garand: needlessly heavy and the gas system lost is finish too easily. Once it was down to bare metal, it stuck out like a sore thumb in the jungle. It also was hard to top off prior to an assault.
His biggest peave was with the 1903 Springfield. It was too fragile, and too easy to jam. It should have never been sent to the Pacific. The sniper version of this rifle was a joke.
George left Guadacanal and went on to be part of Merril's Mauraders in Burma.
Since 2013, I've been carrying an Android tablet loaded with the Amazon Kindle app and other various reader apps. I started off reading the free stuff off Gutenberg, but gradually gravitated to Kindle, because of the selection of Military History available for next to nothing. The Kindle version of this book sold for $.99. The paperback version was $9.99.
One thing I've noticed recently is that I can get free 2-day delivery on Amazon purchases, but if I let them delay for a few days, I often get a free $1 chit for digital purchases. Whenever I buy things, I try to get that deal, and so I'll get what I want, PLUS a free military history book.