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ISBN 978-0-615-35045-5
xviii + 412

Acknowledgements; maps; photos; Notes; Sources; Index

   The Americal Division, with which the US 164th Infantry Regiment served, published a unit history more than fifty years ago, and it's one of the better volumes of that genre. Thus, when we received this review copy, it seemed a little odd that someone would try to produce at this late date a book mostly constructed around the memories of vets of the 164th in WWII.
   Nonetheless, at a time when the number of surviving veterans of the Second World War has plummeted—and continues to shrink rapidly—Terry Shoptaugh has managed to locate and interview enough men of the 164th Infantry Regiment to assemble a remarkably meaty book about them and their unit. Along with material mined from archival sources and the author's explanatory text, the recollections of the GIs make They Were Ready a solid, compelling story. Unfortunately, this kind of book will become more and more difficult to produce as the old soldiers fade away. Perhaps that immutable fact helps make these stories all the more poignant.
   Shoptaugh opens the book with bang, choosing to begin with the arrival of the 164th on Guadalcanal on 13 October 1942, with the battle for the island in full swing. Immediately after arrival, the green troops were subjected to air attacks and a sustained bombardment by IJN warships, including the battleships Kongo and Haruna. The veterans remember the shelling as an awful, gut-wrenching baptism of fire conducted by a distant, faceless enemy. Having no defense against the warships meant they could do little but desperately seek cover.

   Doug Campbell was a member of the 164th Regimental band and like everyone else he was trying to adjust to being at Guadalcanal. Fortunately there was an old veteran nearby to get him through the next few hours. "We spent the whole day unloading ships, getting all our stuff on shore. After that we were sitting around under coconut trees and so forth. In my particular case, I was sitting alongside our C.O. and warrant officer, Gerald Wright. I looked up the beach and there was an American flag up there and I thought, boy, that's reassuring to see an American flag, because we knew that they were present, other troops. About that time a shell lit on the beach and kicked up a lot of sand. And I said to this warrant officer, the C.O., I said, 'Look at that. There's a shell hit the beach up there.' He said, 'Well, don't worry about that because it's our Navy out there, and they're going to have a lifting barrage. They're going to work up into the hills where the Japs are.' I thought, that's fine, but about a minute after that, another shell lit about halfway between where the first one lit and where we were sitting. Well, I says, 'they're going the wrong way with their barrage.' He looked very puzzled. After that the shells started to come right into the area where we were at and we started taking cover. In my particular case, I started looking for a hole and I saw one and I made a dive for it, but another fellow got there first and I landed on top of him."
   That was when Campbell realized that "I'd forgotten my rifle. I left it back under the coconut tree where I was sitting with the warrant officer. I figured well, I've got to get in a hole, but I've got to get my rifle first. So I crawled back, because everything was coming in then. I got my rifle and I headed for a hole. I found a dugout with a bunch of marines in it. And I got down in there and the marine says, 'Say, you got an ammo belt on you?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Get it out of here.' He said, 'The concussion will set it off and we'll all get killed.' So I did that and he says. 'You got your rifle loaded?' and I says, 'Yes.' He says, 'Well, take the clip out, because we don't want that in there. The concussion can set that off.' Then he says, 'You got your helmet strap buckled?' And I said, 'Yes.' He says, 'Take it off, you're liable to get your neck broke from the concussion.' Well, that was on-the-job training, and damn fast. Well, we stayed in the hole while everything went on all night. I guess they gave that to us for about three hours, and in the morning, when we crawled out of these holes, that whole area was devastated from the shells."

   As the bombardment ends and the men of the 164th finally emerge from their shelters, the author backtracks in Chapter 2 in order to provide a brief history of North Dakota and the background of the 164th as a National Guard unit during the Depression. It appears that most enlistments in the unit were motivated by the need to earn a few extra dollars in the hard years before the war.
   Shoptaugh and the veterans describe the regiment's mobilization and movement from the cold Dakota weather to the unfamiliar climes of Louisiana in February 1941. The southerners, it's made clear, weren't thrilled to have the Yankee soldiers in town. Nevertheless, the troops drilled and trained, including participation in the extensive "Louisiana maneuvers" in the summer, and in some cases fraternized with the locals. They were still in Louisiana in December when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and military service suddenly became a more serious business. The 164th immediately moved to San Francisco and then detached smaller units along the coast to defend against the possibility of Japanese landings. All the vets seem to retain vivid memories of those momentous and unpredictable days.
   In March 1942 the unit departed California aboard the liner President Coolidge, bound—although the troops didn't know it—for Australia. From there, the regiment moved to New Caledonia and was on 24 May 1942 assigned to the Americal Division. Chapter 4 concludes with the arrival on Guadalcanal in October, bringing the troops and the reader back to where Shoptaugh left them at the end of the opening chapter.
   Within a couple of days of their arrival in the Solomons, the men of the 164th began moving into the line around Henderson Field on Guadalcanal and were soon in combat with an enemy they could see and shoot at.

   The attack was greeted by some as a relief. All day long they waited, checked their weapons, got some chow and thought about the coming attack. Now it began. "They came at us from out of the tall grass, and some got through the wire," Alvin Tollefsrud recalled. Trees in this part of the line made it difficult to use hand grenades. Fortunately the "E Company had a 37mm anti-tank gun firing canister and it shot into the Japanese flank. I think if it hadn't been for that 37mm gun, a lot more would have gotten through [the barbed wire]. Bill Krogh was behind one of our machine guns and he saw them coming. He pulled the trigger and kept firing until that belt had gone all the way through. Then he slammed another belt in and kept firing. Pretty soon the barrel began to get red and all of a sudden it froze up. We were firing with our M1s. Some of them [the Japanese] had gotten over the wire and were coming right at us. I remember one, he was coming hard, and I don't know who shot him, but he was hit in the eye and about a quarter of his head was blown off. Normally when you hit someone like that they fall backwards, but he was coming so hard he fell forward just a few feet away from us. There was a lull after that charge, and I remember one of guys made a joke. He called out 'pick up your brass.' That got a laugh. Then the Japs came again." At one point a volley of 81mm mortar shells hit Tollefsrud's line, killing one of his men and nearly killing him. "Now I got this second hand later, but I heard those were our shells, fired because someone had been told the Japs had broken through our line. But we held. It was a pretty long night."
   Over in E Company, the men were pouring fire into the Japanese trying to break through at the battalion junction. "Large volumes of American artillery and mortar fire were delivered against this area," John Stannard wrote gratefully. His riflemen now were supported by BARs and a couple more heavy machine guns. They resorted to grenades when the enemy got close. Stannard told his men to be careful with the grenades, which "had an eight second fuse at that time." Hold the grenade for "a three or four second count" before throwing it, he said, or the enemy could throw it. "It was important that the thrower not stutter or lose track of his count," he wryly admitted. Charles Walker, staying with his machine guns in this section of the line, noted that with all the artillery and mortar fire, and the anti-tank guns using canister shot, "the din was terrific."

   The 164th Regiment remained in combat on Guadalcanal through the end of the campaign. On 1 March 1943 it sailed for Fiji, the farm boys having become hardened veterans of the green hell.
   After absorbing replacements and refitting, the unit moved to Bougainville Island on Christmas day and relieved Marines holding the Empress Augusta Bay perimeter. When the Japanese counterattacks finally petered out, the 164th remained on the island through December 1944. The waning months of the year seem to have been spent mostly in boredom, punctuated by occasional patrols. A number of anecdotes highlight the drudgery of that period. By this time, the original composition of the regiment had changed considerably, with more than half the original Dakota boys replaced by draftees from other parts of the country.
   In early January 1945, the regiment—still part of the Americal Division—departed Bougainville and sailed to Tacloban on Leyte Island in the Philippines. The veterans of Guadalcanal and Bougainville remained in action on Leyte, Cebu Island, and Negros Island through May when they were ordered to begin amphibious training for landings in Japan. Fortunately for the infantrymen—who expected to suffer heavy casualties—the invasion wasn't necessary.

   At the 164th Colonel Mahoney cancelled orders for patrols to "seek and destroy" Japanese parties that were still hiding in the hills. Instead, patrols were sent out with interpreters to find the Japanese and see that they knew hostilities were ending. Each patrol was well armed, in case the Japanese refused to believe it. However, these missions came off without violence and on August 28, at a formal surrender ceremony in northern Cebu, 2667 Japanese gave up their weapons. After that, the Americal began packing all its equipment and preparing for transport to Japan, where it would become part of the occupation forces. Most of the 164th regiment arrived at Yokohama on September 10. Some would be there for only a few weeks, others for a year.

   Shoptaugh devotes his last chapter to the story of the men who returned home from war, both at an individual level and in more general terms. Some took advantage of the GI Bill and went to college. Most found jobs. Others went back to farming. Some adjusted to peacetime life better than others. The 164th Infantry Association, founded in 1946, proved a long-lasting and stable organization with a newsletter that provided much of the background information for this book. Annual reunions continued, but the number of aging vets dwindles.
   The Association can be thoroughly proud of They Were Ready, a book they self-published. Unlike the Americal's divisional history, this isn't a view from headquarters. Likewise, the author hasn't produced a deep, analytical unit history like John S. Brown's Draftee Division. But it's far more than a simple scrapbook. Shoptaugh has done a professional job of blending the memories of old soldiers with a solid, factual account of the unit and the wider war. In some vet-oriented books, fading recollections degenerate into inaccurate scuttlebutt about the larger strategic picture, matters that could not have been known to dogfaces in the front lines at the time. A few instances of rumor and gossip appear here, but exaggerated hearsay never derails the book. Shoptaugh maintains a steady course. He handles the interviews, diaries, and letters deftly, keeping the focus on the GIs at the sharp end while framing everything with ample explanation (including footnotes) for those unfamiliar with the course of the war in the Pacific.
   A fine job by the farm boys and the author. A worthy book for a worthy regiment.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from the 164th Infantry Association.
   Thanks to the 164th Infantry Association for providing this review copy.

Reviewed 18 July 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Bill Stone
May not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Stone & Stone