The John Basilone Medal of Honor Location - Guadalcanal

good morning I walk into an area which I've been requested and I was gonna do in the later episodes but I thought Eliza will do it and this one it's called the John Basilone position to spurt bloody reach going down into position so it's only a roughly 15 minute video if you want to know more about the bass along metal minor incident I encourage you to read as much as you can about it it's quite an amazing effort he did so I hope you enjoy this position was occupied on the October 24th 25th 26 1942 by the 1st battalion 7th Marines which is something you might know his chesty pullers battalion and hassle had a known very well-known marine called petunia Sergeant John Basilone whose machine-gun section later so what Harry I'm walking down now is basically I think it's gonna be called the sector 3 track now the Vandergriff the division commander had his sectors divided up in defensive sector the sector 3 was his southern sector on the line and I'll showing a map but this sector here had a sector three trail it was a a veneer of approach for the Japanese I'm actually looking south he can't say anything he's jungle but that's looking south and that's the direction of the Japanese attack so they're coming from that direction roughly three regiments and attacked over two nights so my previous episode of coffin corner I've talked about how they attack heavily on the second night at that location but the first night they attacked I guess in dribs and drabs due to the thick jungle and they lost the unit cohesion so that attack roughly platoon to company strength piecemeal so they allowed the Marines who at this stage you know are only five hundred men covering something like twenty five hundred yards because the second Battalion the 7th Marines were all pulled out and was put I explained a place called Kola ridge which is closer to the mechanic Oh so during the time of the battle the 7th Marines regimental anti-tank unit which is 37 millimeters was positioned in this location and John Basilone and his to machine-gun section was supporting those 37 s and covering this on avenue of approach walking even with the Marines lines so I'll just move straight in simply can find some bunker positions this is thick jungle floor so over the years of a lot of stuff accumulating them so they don't stand out as much as the ones on the call ridge so I don't know if you'll just see it actually position in front of us there's some ones up here become a bit more clear if you say I'll take his jungle is now even during the time of the battle the Marines were stuck down in here in his thick jungle and they would cut a hundred yard and 75 yard and firing lines of firing lines they called him they also had a something like a full foot wide and about six foot high triple and quadruple apron Ababwa they were hoping the Japanese would just snug up on that and they could take them out with machine-gun fire so we're coming up to the the Basilone position the great and late john innes the australian historian who actually lived on Guadalcanal for 20 years designated this was the base on position and I spent a couple of weeks just one-on-one with John and I correspond him from 2009 to his death of last June she brought me down to this position this is what is known as the Bassel on position the number of people who visited the spot and you can see it's a quite a large hole and you supposed to had one machine gun section I have two heavy machine guns in this hole and if I pan around now how I just showed you almost connects so if this is the base on position you probably had possibly one machine gun in there and one machine gun in day you when I first visited this position you know in some to visit and they say off this position falafel or intake you boy that's straight out looking toward the the front lines of Japanese were attacking that direction there but some people say well this position if you look at the orientation of the bakker it's facing they say that way we know anything about machine guns and apply some of the machine guns are put in an in-flight or oblique fire so they're far from this side so that starts to go up the bloody rigid right in front of us and I'll walk that way on the way out there's several machine gun bunkers there so if you had a machine gun bunker here there till the fire would have been directly in well in that direction you're probably cross firing from a couple of other ones up on that hill there and go over here the other bunker it's orientation it's in that direction so another crisscross so you are looking from the Japanese point of view to the Barcelona bunker so Basilan bunker is about 34 feet 35 feet directly in front of us now the Marines had like I said before two or three lines of Bob wah and I'll show you one strand or remnant it's not straying really a pigtail left in the ground you barely see it Thank You mr. Newman it most time of the year this place is this Cove with water so I picked a draw time to come down and show you guys all right Basilone zone statement you gave about seven months after the battle gave it to two Marine officers in Quantico and there's a written statement I've got that statement he basically says a Japanese over the Bob wire was roughly thirty feet in front of me so it's correlates with the evidence here I know there's been several bits of evidence located in this spot along from I guess you could impact it bullets Japanese buckles fragments and everything if this wasn't bachelors position in front of us it's very very near it but there's a lot of fighting going on right where I'm at right now and battle I said after the battle it was about I think 36 Japanese might be in 34 Japanese between the Bob wireline and his bunker a long walk back to the Basilone bunker and their fields of fire he said he could see only about 20 20 yards on the other side of the bob wire so you can imagine as a machine gunner your field the fire isn't that vast there's the Basilone bunker it's the second bunker next to it nice try the area where the bob wire was the Japanese attack here we were walking further down a line from the Barcelona bunker that's all said in his interview he was definitely was in the flat jungle he wasn't up on the ridge I'll stop here I won't be able to see it so that's the eastern spur of Blade II reach that's where the rage comes down in Ian's so he said he was on a flat and he was attached to Charlie Company at the time normally was a Delta Company which was the weapons company was in Delta his machine guns attached to Delta so I've got a mount and it shows the line between Charlie and the next company which was the Bravo Company which was located up on the ridge and further on and the company boundary lines were at the foot of that Ridge there so when this jungle is cut down I've seen it once there's a number of foxholes behind us and I read one account of a Marine his rifle squad is actually supporting by slums and won't be able to see it there's a foxhole or a bunker can be right in front of us see if I can go down you can see the deflating the ground but there's definitely a large one day that correlates to the rest him about 12 meters apart in Vinnitsa we proceed further up this trail you know I'll show you the machine-gun buckler's up on this hill this was a cluster of bunkers and it was the end of the line so this probably made your strong points for the Marines this is directly from the Marine buckers I'm paying to the right that's the hill the base long position is a bit further to my right machine-gun buggers or by that he'll never notice evidence here they look just like a road you see the locals have been doing the bit of wood cutting you but you'll notice they're Bateman on the right it's cut down this area is nice and flat and then it drops off from the left-hand side and I've walked the base of this bloody region as a road cooling it cut in here so I was a bit farm you know confused but I said one will they put a flat road I'm sorry big spiders waiting on my head let's call them now anyway why would they put a big road directly front are the machine gun buggers you know would it be a supply road it makes sense to put it behind then it came across this photo and once I looked at his photos someone said I don't know where it is and I'm new automatically there's a good chance this photo was taken here dislocation you can note how thick the ball bar was which gave the Marines the advantage of the limited visibility ahead hoping the Japanese would be hung up on the barbed wire long enough so they could take him down with machine-gun fire you noticed a thick jungle on both sides that's a great photo and I think you're great on location tie-in now we're proceeding up this no this is the far end of the eastern slope of bloody Ridge we'll start to say a few machine-gun bunkers in a second there's one directly in front of us I don't be able to see the book are there mm-hmm go to the right just facing northeast for about 70 meters that way is the Basilone Booker and these machine guns with inflation that way and I mean Basilone bunkers machine guns of inflation right back toward us in that nice oblique in-flight fog about 100 meters that way as a sector 3 trail that goes straight to fodder 1 airfield which is a Avenue of approach for the Japanese do another thick jungle heel this is a great example of a machine gun Bakr you can clearly see this big fella so panning around no people to see down below is to swear I was filming with the Bob Barr so the Bob wire was right below us at the foot of the hill take Bob wire strands this means gene gun position I'll horn type myself by see fights in that direction the Japanese were coming from that direction this machine gun covered that air there would have provided great in-flight fire oh it's covered with bunkers cessation slop of bloody rich he's a pretty well-preserved that's a large bunker someone's been digging around in this one there's a little bit of a relic pretty sure this comes off in hanker night cardboard shipping counter stirs so this is the end caps that TN caps on a cardboard tube pull them out and then pull the grenade out another use a lot of grenades it's obviously not part of the battle look we're still in the trash [Music] it's some type of ration I'd say I think I might be soluble coffee they call it instant coffee you'll have to have a look lighter and see so these places really never been on looked into and I could probably dig around here in front a bit of stuff and I would have walked over hundreds if not thousands of bullet casing at least grenade fragments well this is the remnant of one the big Banton trees you know I spoke to all the veterans of the battle he mentions these big trees well he ran imagine this fella here was during a time of the bottle pretty cool if you could get in there now probably get a bit of shrapnel and bullets under that one here they were large and huge in fact up on Mount Austin Japanese built their pillboxes out of them at the base of the trees just a good example most of these large trees have been gone over the years for this wood you can imagine how much would that one would have supply so yeah this was definitely here during the time of the battle on a knoll again you can probably see the depression there once again if you can look out here balance positions in front of us you know big jungle about probably 100 meters you feel the fire from this one the Japanese coming from the southern direction that way hope you've enjoyed this episode on a marine legend I'd recommend you read about his and his team's actions on that night thank you

Channel: Guadalcanal - Walking a Battlefield

Views: 151,634

Rating: 4.9187732 out of 5

Keywords: john basilone medal of honor location, john basilone battle site guadalcanal, basilone battlefield tour, john innes

Id: LxbtAcbzrZ4

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 29 2019