Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Arkansas

#1

OneManGang

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2004
Messages
1,845
Likes
8,208
#1
Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Arkansas

At least the suspense was over early on. Arkansas laid bare every weakness in the 2015 Vols that your humble scribe has been writing about since Opening Day.

The weather was bad, the field slick and the Hogs were hungry. It was a game where Tennessee could ill afford to make any mistake and made dozens of them.

Tennessee's youngsters have had their confidence shattered by losses to Oklahoma, Florida and now Arkansas in games they should have/could have won. Fans are restive and blaming HeadVol Jones for every malady in their lives from Miley Cyrus to the dog poo on their shoes, and the hardest games of the season are yet to come.

A team has to learn how to win big games and the only way to learn how to win big games is to actually win big games.

And so it goes.
---
Today we return to the battlefields of the Pacific. Last weekend, 1st Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman came home seventy-two years after his exploits on a tiny spit of land in the middle of the vast Pacific known as Betio Island. Bonnyman's grandson Clay Evans hooked up with an outfit called History Flight to go back to Betio and find his grandfather's remains and bring him and thirty-five of his fellow Marines home. Lt. Bonnyman was buried with full military honors in Highland Memorial Cemetery in Knoxville last Sunday. Semper Fi, Marine!

The Gilbert Islands are a group of fifteen or so atolls scattered about 700 miles northeast from Bougainville, which we visited through the eyes of LTC Boldrick. The Gilberts are part of a series of island chains forming an arc from Fiji to the Philippines. In any other time these tiny sand spits would resemble nothing so much as a setting for “Gilligan's Island” than scenes of desperate and bloody combat.

A raid on a radio transmitter on Makin Atoll brought the Gilberts to the attention of the Japanese Army and soon Japanese garrisons arrived. Their main focus would be to build and defend an airfield on Betio Island, the largest island of a tiny atoll called Tarawa. Betio is about a mile long and less than 1000 yards wide, barely enough room for the field. This base would be in a good position to cover the more important bases in the Marshall Islands a bit further west. Admiral Keiji Shibazaki arrived to command the 2600 Japanese troops and 2200 or so Korean and Japanese laborers on Betio Island. He put the laborers to work building fortifications all over the island. In a message to Tokyo, the Admiral boasted that the Americans could not take Betio in a thousand years with a million men. He quite underestimated his opponents.

American reconnaissance aircraft quickly spotted the airstrip on Betio and plans were set in motion to take the Gilberts and use the airstrip as a base for land-based planes to support future operations planned in the Marshalls. The plan was code-named Operation GALVANIC.

The plan was systematic and the American forces overwhelming. There were over 35,000 Marines and Seabees detailed for the landings. On the naval side, for example, the fire-support group boasted no less than seven battleships, three of which had been pulled from the mud of Pearl Harbor and were more than ready to hit back at the Japanese. Covering the invasion force were the eleven fast carriers of Task Force 50. The Admiral commanding the fire-support force assured the Marines, “We are not just going to bombard Tarawa. Gentlemen, we will obliterate it.” The Admiral quite overestimated his technological terrors.

The landing force sailed into the lagoon formed by Tarawa Atoll and unleashed its big guns while carrier planes bombed and strafed every palm tree, hut and rock on Betio. Gigantic holes appeared all over the island and quickly filled with water. Safely ensconced under layers of concrete, sand and palm logs that were in some cases a dozen feet thick, the Japanese grimly rode it out with minimal losses.

The morning of 20 November 1943 saw the first use of the amphibious tractor or Amtrak in landings. The first few crawled over the reef about 1000 yards offshore and landed without much trouble, in some cases making it about 100 yards inland before realizing they were isolated and turning around. As they turned the Japanese opened up. The early amtracks were not armored and were thus vulnerable to any kind of bullet or shell and were soon burning up and down the beach. Other Marines had to travel in conventional landing craft which, due to the low Spring tides (Tarawa is south of the Equator) could not float over the reef and had to lower their ramps and the Marines jumped into the 4-foot deep water to wade in. That walk in to the beaches became a bitter page in Marine Corps lore. In the center of the beaches was a long pier which was infested with snipers and machine-gun nests and a the beached hulk of a transport had been turned into a fortress and Japanese in both poured a devastating flanking fire into the Marines.

The water between the reef and the beaches was soon tinged red.

Once ashore, things were even worse. The only cover was a low palm-log seawall and even it was cut with loopholes from which a Japanese rifle would appear and loose off a few rounds before the owner retreated to a larger pillbox. Colonel David M. Shoup was in overall command onshore and made his headquarters in a knocked-out pillbox and tried to make some sort of sense out of the carnage. One of his early messages back to the fleet was chilling: “Issue in doubt.” Shoup himself had been wounded but jammed a cigar stub in his mouth and kept issuing orders. General David M. Shoup would wear the Medal of Honor during his stint as Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Unbelievably, the Marines made progress. It was slow. It was bloody, but it was still movement of a sort. By the end of the first day, the Marines had reached the airfield and were clinging to a narrow beachhead by their fingernails. Shoup's message that evening was descriptive: “Casualties many. Percentage dead unknown. Combat efficiency, we are winning.” Over a thousand of the 5000 Marines in the initial landings had been killed over the three days of battle on Betio and many more wounded.


800px-Tarawa_beach_HD-SN-99-03001.JPEG


Hell in a small place. The beach at Betio on Day 2. (US Navy)

An officer of the 18th Marines (Engineers) had been sent there to serve as a beachmaster, sorting out landing craft, supplies and men as they arrived. After about noon on that first day, no landing craft dared approach and all supply runs were canceled until dark. The officer of Engineers began to gather scratch groups of men, explosives, and flamethrowers and led them against Japanese bunkers knocking out more than a few. His name was Alexander Bonnyman.

The next day was more of the same. Marines relentlessly pressed on, destroying pillbox after pillbox and suffering appalling casualties in the process. By nightfall, the airfield had been captured and the Marines were poised to wipe out the remaining Japanese occupying the narrow eastern end of the island. A huge Japanese bunker was the key to the remaining defenses. Lt. Bonnyman gathered another team and led them up the twenty-foot high side of the sand-covered bunker, blasting and burning everything they could see. As they reached the top of the bunker some 250 or so Japanese swarmed out to engage the Marines. Lt. Bonnyman was killed in the firefight and buried in a hastily dug trench nearby along with 35 other Marines. The location of that trench was forgotten.

Lt. Bonnyman's father, mother, and sister accepted the Congressional Medal of Honor on his behalf from President Truman in 1947.

---

Napoleon once quipped that in war “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.”

So it is with football teams. Our beloved Vols, bluntly, have no confidence in themselves at this point and there NOTHING, repeat, nothing, a coach can do to change that. He can cajole, he can encourage but the change MUST come from inside the individual. The most telling moment of Saturday's dismal outing was when no less than four Vols had a Pig cornered in the Arkansas backfield and NOT ONE of them made an aggressive move to stop the runner who proceeded without much opposition to the end zone. It was that run that broke the Vols' back.

I do not envy HeadVol Jones this week. He has to find some way to re-instill confidence in his charges but knows in his heart that this is something they must do themselves.

So how did the team do compared to the Maxims?

1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.

Great Day, where to begin? After jumping out to a 14-0 lead and then watching the Porkers come back to tie the score the general behavior of the team left one grateful they seemed to be able to find their own huddle.

2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way … SCORE!

Fumbling on the Pig 9 violates the very essence of this Maxim.

3. If at first the game – or the breaks – go against you, don’t let up … PUT ON MORE STEAM!

Arkansas adhered to this Maxim, the Vols did not.

4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.

Aside from Daniel's sterling performance as ther UT punter and Evan Berry's dandy return of the opening kickoff, it was fail, fail and fail.

5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle … THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.

I began this rant earlier and this would seem a good place to pick it up. Football almost always rewards the aggressive move. There was none of that from roughly 8:00 in the first canto onward. Harking back to the waning days of the Fulmer regime, it seemed UT's players on both sides of the ball kept waiting around for someone else to make the plays. Dobbs repeatedly threw a bit off, but in his defense, he got no help from his receiver corps who appeared to not really try even on a few occasions where the ball hit them in the worst possible place: between the numbers and right in their hands. Hesitancy will lose. Every time.

At this point there is a definite lack of on-field leadership. Somebody needs to step up.

6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.

Medley is now 6/12 on the year. Not nearly good enough.

7. Carry the fight to Arkansas and keep it there for sixty minutes.

Note to Team 119: 8:06 in the first quarter does NOT equal 60:00. You are welcome.
---
After the successful 1979 season in which HeadVol Johnny Majors led his team to a 7-5 record, his 1980 bunch started out with high hopes only to see heartbreaking losses in consecutive games against Georgia and Southern Cal (one of the few teams Tennessee has played more than once and never beaten) and plunged to a 5-6 finish. The good news: the next year the Vols went 8-4 and won the SEC title in 1985.

It happens.

I thought from the beginning that Tennessee wasn't all that despite the rosy (and somewhat delusional) expectations amongst the majority of Vol fans pre-season.

I wish I had been mistaken

But …

Better days are ahead.

Brick by Brick, Baby!

MAXOMG


Suggested Reading:

Michael Graham, Mantle of Heroism

Ralph Martin, The GI War

Derrick Wright, Tarawa: A Hell of a Way to Die

© 2015
Keeping Your Stories Alive
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 17 people
#2
#2
I apologize for the delay in posting this but I had a serious case of "I got nothing" until about 7am and then my computer petulantly began an update process that occupied most of the rest of the morning. It finished about fifteen minutes before I left for church.

*grumble*
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 people
#3
#3
Wasn't 1985 when we whacked Vinny Testaverde and the Miami Hurricanes in the Sugar Bowl 35-7? We were a big underdog at that; no one gave us a chance to win.
---------------------------------
Close but no cigar--1986.

The 1986 Sugar Bowl, featuring the 2nd ranked Miami Hurricanes and the 8th ranked Tennessee Volunteers, was played on January 1, 1986, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Miami appeared dominant on its opening drive, and scored first on an 18-yard touchdown pass from Vinny Testaverde to Michael Irvin to take a 7–0 lead. As the game wore on, however, Tennessee's defense began to shut down Miami's vaunted passing attack. In the second quarter, Daryl Dickey threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Jeff Smith as Tennessee tied the game at 7–7. Tim McGee recovered a fumble in the end zone as Tennessee jumped out to a 14–7 halftime lead.

In the third quarter, Sam Henderson scored on a 1-yard touchdown run as Tennessee led 21–7. Jeff Powell scored on a 60-yard touchdown run to make it 28–7. In the fourth quarter, Charles Wilson scored on a 6-yard run as Tennessee won by a 35–7 margin.

Tennessee quarterback Daryl Dickey was named Most Valuable Player.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
#6
#6
Thanks OMG, we are all at a loss for words (minus a few who want to fuss and probably with good reason) I appreciate your effort.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
#8
#8
Helps keep bad days in perspective. Closing 1,000 yards with no cover into a fortified defense would not be a lot of fun.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
#10
#10
It does seem in game after game, we pay lip service to the Maxims while the other team actually live by them and beat us with them
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
#11
#11
It does seem in game after game, we pay lip service to the Maxims while the other team actually live by them and beat us with them

In defense of the program, UT endured 5 years of coaching that could not have cared less about the tradition of Neyland's Maxims. At least Jones has embraced them and many want him ousted also. Seems a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, if you ask me.

Thank you, OMG. Very enjoyable, and informative reading kind sir.:good!:
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
#12
#12
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -Winston Churchill, 1942
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
#14
#14
The team performance in the next two games, win or lose, will be interesting. I don't expect a victory but I would like to see the Vols fight with the spirit this program used to have in its players. We will see if HeadVol Jones can inspire this team or not.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
#16
#16
OP I appreciate your continued optimism and faith in the Vols in spite of this recent sub-par effort. We only can hope they get it turned around this weekend.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
#17
#17
A very wise man once said (I think it was Atilla the Hun), "It is not enough that we succeed. Everyone else ... must fail."

The Vols would be well served to remember those words.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person

VN Store



Back
Top