OneManGang
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Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Florida
So, here's how it went down. It was Saturday, UT vs Florida, in previous years this was the bell-weather. Excitement and chills. People went through game day rituals. Yours truly would break out his Orange or White game jerseys depending on the game's location, put on the Field Generals and either head for Neyland or have the TV pre-tuned to catch the game.
We used to live for this.
Tennessee WINS! We have proven the superiority of Our Way of Life!
Tennessee LOSES! Oh, Lordy! How do we fix this? Can we still beat Bama? Maybe back into the SEC Championship? If not, which New Years Day bowl do ya think we can go to?
By the Almighty we'll get them lizards next year!
2019 … laid on the couch in jeans and a t-shirt and just watched the whole thing in a sort of morbid fascination.
Bye the bye, if there is anyone out there who can say they were surprised by the outcome, I'd like to shake their hand for being the greatest Vol fan ever. Then punch them in the nose for being a dam*ed liar.
There were bright spots, The Tennessee defense looked better than it has since the mid-point of last season. At least for the first thirty-five to forty minutes of game time. Then having received exactly zero help from their comrades on offense, they went into a sort of slow collapse, like an old barn left abandoned too long.
But enough of that.
I am a Vol. I will continue to support MY university until I shuffle off this mortal coil.
But, man …
And, honestly, that's all I can think of to say about last Saturday's ordeal in the Swamp.
* * * * * * * * *
Author's note: According to the list of topics I should be doing the epic battle of St. Lo in 1944. But upon consultation with a learned colleague, we came to the conclusion that we Vol fans are stuck in 1942 where the timeline shows disaster after disaster with but a few bright spots as the Allies in general, and the Americans in particular, sorted out various command and training problems and laid the groundwork for later success.
Even the most mighty of endeavors starts with a first step. Such a step, on the long road to Tokyo in World War II was made by an anonymous Marine from the 5th Marine Regiment at 0910 on 7 August 1942 on a beach at Lunga Point on the coast of the island of Guadalcanal. By nightfall over 11,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division were ashore and had fanned out capturing the airfield (which was the point of the whole operation) against only scattered Japanese resistance. American Navy and Marine fighters and dive-bombers were flown in and took up roost on the airfield which was soon to be named for Marine Major Lofton Henderson who was killed during the Battle of Midway. American intel had guesstimated there were 8,000 Japanese on Guadalcanal but the actual number was about a quarter of that, and most of them were laborers working on the airfield.
The Marines dug in and awaited developments. One of the worst developments was a night battle between the escorting allied cruisers and a Japanese naval force in which no less than three of the allied cruisers were sunk. The Navy made plans to withdraw completely on the evening of the 9th. They did so, having unloaded less than half of the Marine's supplies. Marine General Archie Vandergrift, commanding all units ashore, remarked bitterly, “They left us bare a**ed.”
Guadalcanal Island is some 85 miles long and roughly 30 across at its widest. In 1942 it was sparsely populated and the main economic activity was the growing and harvesting of coconuts to be dried and turned into copra which was then shipped out to be refined into coconut oil. A line of ridges, crowned by Mount Austin which overlooks Lunga Point runs down the center of the island. The coastal areas are a mass of jungle cut by rivers and ravines cut by runoff rainwater which can total over 120 inches annually. So far, it sounds like an idyllic tropical island, but there was another side to the beauty. Temperatures hover in the high 80s all day and all night. Humidity is in high 90s and the jungle canopy just traps it all at ground level. The rivers are populated with crocodiles and there are large poisonous centipedes. The air teems with mosquitoes that carry a staggering variety of illnesses ranging from malaria to dengue fever and some diseases they didn't even have names for in 1942.
Within weeks every man on Guadalcanal was sick. Dysentery was the most common disease and the mildest. At many points during the campaign a man with a temperature of less than 103 was marked “fit for duty,” given a couple of aspirin, and sent back to the line.
A few days after the landings a Japanese soldier stumbled into the Marine lines and told the intelligence officers that he was part of a detachment that was cut off a couple of miles to the west, starving, sick of the war and ready to surrender. Lt. Col. George Goettge, the division intelligence officer, organized a 25-man team and set off in in several boats with the prisoner in tow to gather them up. As they landed on the indicated bit of beach the Marines were standing awaiting developments as the Japanese called out to the tree line. A full company of infantry was dug in there and opened up. In minutes most of the team was dead or wounded and Goettge ordered three men to get back to Marine lines for reinforcements. All three were hit as they pulled out and Japanese mortar rounds were landing among the boats so they stuck together and began swimming. As they swam away they saw Japanese soldiers charging from the tree line and samurai swords flashing in the sunlight. It was late when the three tottered into Marine lines and told their tale. The next morning a company of Marines went back to the site where they found the mutilated corpses of 22 Marines and the prisoner. This incident (among others) set the tone for the Pacific War. From this point on quarter would not be asked for nor given.
Every battle became a fight to the death.
The first Japanese counter-attack came about two weeks after the landings and was repulsed. Other attacks, many coming within an eyelash of breaking through, continued as the “Tokyo Express” of resupply runs from the main enemy base at Rabaul brought more men and supplies. Some of the epic naval battles around Guadalcanal have been described in these pages. Suffice to say that the allied navies suffered more men killed at sea than the Marines did on shore.
In spite of it all the Marines continued to expand their beach head.
But it was hell.
The reporter Ralph Martin summed it up best:
“Hell was sharp-edge cogon grass higher than your head.
Hell was red furry spiders as big as your fist, giant lizards as long as your leg, leeches falling from trees to suck blood, armies of white ants with a bite of fire, scurrying scorpions inflaming any flesh they touched, enormous rats and bats everywhere, and rivers with waiting crocodiles.
Hell was the sour, foul smell of the squishy jungle, humidity that rotted a body within hours, a sticky, stinking wet heat of dripping rain forests that sapped the strength of any man.
Hell was an enemy hidden in the dark deep of shadows, an enemy so fanatic that it used its own dead as booby traps, an enemy that whispered at night, 'Come here, please … come here, please ...' or else charged in a banzai attack, climbing over its own dead, yelling, 'f*** Babe Ruth!!'”
By November it was clear the 1st Marine Division was about done in. There were new, fresh units arriving and plans were made to extract Vandergrift and his boys. In December, the Army's 25th Infantry Division and the newly formed 23rd “Americal” Division, so named because it was organized from units on New Caledonia, along with the 2nd Marine Division arrived and the remnants of the 1st Marine Division, once the pride of the Corps, began to leave. The physical condition of the men was such that the 1st Marine Division would not be ready again for combat for over a year.
The combined Army and Marine force would clear the rest of the island, with the Japanese staging one of the great stealth achievements of the war by extracting their last 12,000 soldiers from the tip of the island right under the Americans' noses. On 9 February 1943 Guadalcanal was declared secure.
It is a part of Marine Corps lore now that on a cross in the American cemetery on Guadalcanal the following was found:
And when he gets to heaven,
To St. Peter he will tell,
“One more Marine reporting , sir.
I've served my time in hell.”
To St. Peter he will tell,
“One more Marine reporting , sir.
I've served my time in hell.”
“Semper fi” is not just a slogan.
*********
a/n2: Instead of recounting the manifest failings of Our Beloved Vols against the Giant Water Lizards I have chosen to just do some general ranting.
So how did the team do compared to the Maxims?
1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
I am sick and tired of every damned play being subject to litigation! Watching games has become more like an episode of “Perry Mason” than a football game. For most games it adds at least a half-hour to proceedings. Yes, I understand the desire to “get the call right” but if EVERY single move is going to be litigated from above, why are there officials on the field at all? Just give the guys in the booth a big horn or red light and let them make the calls. All you need then is one guy to put the ball down and a chain crew.
Great day! Just make call, spot the ball and run the next play!
2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way … SCORE!
I really want to find the guy that originated that “IT'S THIIIRDDDD DOOWWWNNN!!” screech that EVERY PA guy does and take his mike and beat him about the head and shoulders with it.
3. If at first the game – or the breaks – go against you, don’t let up … PUT ON MORE STEAM!
On a similar theme TURN DOWN THE CANNED MUSIC! Or better yet, get rid of it entirely. It is annoying in the extreme. The NFL started this in the '70s this by playing music while the ball was in the air during kickoffs and it has since metastasized.
4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
It's past time to fish or cut bait about letting offensive linemen use their hands to block. The way it is now, holding can be called on every play. Either make them hold their hands in the way it used to be or eliminate the holding call. Ditto this “targeting” nonsense with its affiliated litigation.
5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle … THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
Take the cameras off family members in the stands. Please. Mama and Daddy are there to watch their little June Bug play football and pray he doesn't get hurt, not audition for a reality show.
6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
Kickoffs into the end zone are fascist. Either eliminate the return altogether or award the receiving team a point every time a kickoff sails into the end zone.
7. Carry the fight to the opponent and keep it there for sixty minutes.
Related to all the above: there is absolutely no reason a college football game should require four hours or more to complete barring overtime.
Speaking of which, I much prefer the NFL overtime rule to anything the NCAA has instituted.
Thatisall.
MAXOMG
© 2019 Keeping Your Stories Alive
Suggested Reading:
Jack Coggins, The Campaign for Guadalcanal
Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal
Ralph G. Martin, The GI War
Marines of the 5th Marine Regiment come ashore on Guadalcanal 7 August 1942. (US Navy)
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