Three War Marine Hero: General Raymond G. Davis

Part One

Formative Years, 1915–1941

CHAPTER 1

A Youngster from Georgia

Raymond Gilbert Davis was born on 13 January 1915 in Fitzgerald, a small town in south central Georgia, 155 miles south of Atlanta. The town was founded in 1895 by a former drummer boy in the Union Army as a community for Civil War veterans from both sides of the conflict. However, the majority of its first citizens were 2,700 Union veterans, which seems bizarre given the lingering hard feelings about the war. However, in a show of magnanimity, the first two streets running north–south were named after Confederate generals Lee and Johnson, while the first two streets on the east were named after Union generals Grant and Sherman. After a year, the citizens planned a Thanksgiving harvest parade. Separate Union and Confederate parades were planned. However, when the band started to play, the Confederate veterans joined the Union veterans to march as one beneath the U.S. flag. The Davis family tree, like many in the South, notes that one ancestor fought for the Union and another for the Confederacy.

Ray’s father, Raymond Roy, was in the grocery business, which caused the family to move frequently. Ray recalled, Even though I began school in Fitzgerald, we moved to Atlanta after only the second grade, where I spent most of my young life. In Atlanta I attended Cascade Springs Grammar School, a two-mile walk from my home, Samuel Inman Elementary School, and Bass Junior High. The grammar school was a small two-room building, with six grades, and two teachers. Ray’s third-grade room housed two other grades. He vividly recalled the teacher using a large switch on an unruly boy. The next morning we were shocked to see the boy’s woman [mother] enter the classroom and give the teacher three lashes with a similar switch.

One of the teachers owned an open Ford touring automobile. It would quit on occasion, while en route to school, so we pushed it up the hills in exchange for a ride on the running board on the downhills. It was a great way to break up a dull day at school, and the teacher seemed to go easier on us on days when we pushed her to school.¹

When I was in the 3rd grade, my uncle came back from WWI and I sat on his knee for about a week and that’s about as close to the military as I came. He challenged me to be best in my class and participate in everything and I think that started my career.²

A varsity wrestler at Atlanta Technical High School, Davis was not a star but kept at it, vying for the top spot with another boy in his weight class. In addition to wrestling, he ran cross-country. In my senior year I started ‘pumping iron’ because my physical education teacher had a gym in downtown Atlanta. He was a big brute of a guy who had enormous physical proportions, including a 17.5-inch neck. I think that I stuck with him more for hunting trips made during the season than for gym work, but the resultant physical power served me well years later in the combat of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

In 1933 Davis graduated from high school, having been selected to the National Honor Society and as the best drill cadet in the JROTC unit, and entered the Georgia School of Technology (now the Georgia Institute of Technology; commonly called Georgia Tech). He signed up for the full four-year program in the Army ROTC unit because of its small monetary allowance and free uniform.

Davis enjoyed success at Tech, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. He was awarded the college president’s Gold Key for Scholarship and was designated as an ROTC honor graduate, eligible for a commission in the Army. I was very fond of some of the instructors. They were great inspiration to me in everyday life. I just enjoyed and appreciated them.³

The time came for graduation from Georgia Tech. I was a chemical engineer and I had been awarded a teaching fellowship at the University of Tennessee in some experimental work in elemental phosphorus and it was to pay me a small chunk of money and guaranteed me a master’s degree in 18 months if I worked at it. I accepted this program just before graduation but then I got word from Knoxville that the money for the project had been cut back to half as much. Well, what they were originally paying me was starvation wages. Half that much I just couldn’t take it. This was during the Depression and I just didn’t have the funds.⁴

I talked to the Army instructors about going into the service and they offered me the five-year Thompson Act, where reserve officers could serve on active duty for a 5-year period, but with no assurance at all that you could continue in the Army. This friendly lieutenant colonel told me the Navy had a commission in the Marine Corps that was a more permanent nature. So I went down to inquire and they described the program. After several candidates were interviewed, I was selected as the Marine candidate for the class of 1938 from Georgia Tech. At the time, the Marine Corps took advantage of the lean depression years and offered commissions to the top one or two graduates from the best ROTC colleges and universities.⁵

Davis was briefly commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Infantry Reserve, before resigning his commission to accept appointment as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps on 27 June 1938. He once told a friend that he asked the recruiter if he could have some active duty time so he could eat. At the time, the military had some of the only jobs available.

I told my family I wasn’t even sure what it was that I was getting into … except the Marines had a great reputation, Davis recalled. The regular commission on active duty sounded good, so it was the Corps for me. I caught a bus to go over to Charleston Navy Yard for a physical. Somebody on the bus commented as we went in the gate about the Marine on the gate. That was the first time I ever got a serious look at a Marine.⁶

CHAPTER 2

Second Lieutenant Raymond G. Davis

Second Lieutenant Raymond G. Davis received a train voucher and a set of orders from the Commandant of the Marine Corps to report for the 1938–1939 Marine Officers’ Basic School class. He arrived at the Philadelphia & Reading Train and Bus Station on Broad Street and took a trolley to the Navy Yard, where a Marine sentry directed him to the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters.

The Marine Officers’ Basic School then, as now, took newly commissioned officers and taught them the basics of how to be an officer by focusing on small-unit fundamentals and weaponry. The ten-month course, a total of 1,200 hours, included a four-week block of instruction in the field centering on combat firing and small-unit tactics and a second phase at the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in the rugged foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Pennsylvania. In the fall, the student officers spent a month at firing ranges at Cape May, New Jersey, learning everything from hand grenades to mortars. Davis found the curriculum interesting and enjoyable.

My classmates were a great group of people, enjoyable and smart, Davis recalled. Among the 75 men in the class there were one or two from every college and university in the country, including 25 of the top graduates from the Naval Academy. Davis recalled one of his classmates, Second Lieutenant Gregory H. Pappy Boyington, later a Medal of Honor recipient and one of the leading fighter aces in World War II. I believe anything anyone wants to say about him. He was the top character of all time and a great flyer. There were a few training planes at the Navy Yard and we’d fly up to New York for the weekend. I would always pick Pappy, if I could, because of his flying skills.¹

Philadelphia’s closeness to Washington, D.C., was made to order for young bachelor officers and Davis was one of those Liberty Hounds. Washington was an attractive liberty town, he admitted. One of his buddies drove a robin-egg-blue Chrysler convertible, which became our headquarters in D.C. However, duty came before liberty. One night near-disaster struck because the Hounds ran out of gas and decided to sleep it off before returning to base. Unfortunately they arrived just in time to discover the battalion executive officer was conducting a surprise inspection. The miscreants slipped into formation … but not quickly enough. Davis was chewed out and had his liberty curtailed, which ended his D.C. adventures.²

Lieutenant Colonel Gilder T. Jackson, a World War I hero, commanded the Basic School. Jackson was somewhat aloof, not really close to the students. He never got in there and mixed it up with any of us, Davis said. I recall his one appearance in our classroom. There had been some rumors which he did not like. He mounted the platform. We waited in great anticipation to hear our first words from this big boss. Very quickly he said, ‘Some birds were in a horse barn eating manure when discovered by the farmer. They flew to a nearby fence as he loaded his gun. The farmer did not notice where they were until they started noisy chirping. Bang! They were shot off the fence. Remember, don’t chirp when you are full of shit!’ Out he walked.³

Davis thought the instructors were competent. However, the legendary Lewis B. Chesty Puller was a cut above. He was one of the most popular instructors at the school. Lewie [friends called Puller Lewie, never Chesty] taught tactics, primarily small wars, Davis recalled. He was the kind of instructor who would walk in with his lesson plan, put it on the lectern, and talk about the nitty gritty of wars that he had been in, without referring to the lesson plan. His lectures would cover topics that make and break officers.⁴

Puller was also responsible for a platoon of lieutenants. He encouraged them to maintain high standards of discipline, military bearing, and dress. You had to pass the Puller uniform inspection, Davis recalled. If you had room to breathe, it was too loose. One lieutenant had his uniform made by Jacob Reed, considered to be one of the finest uniform tailors in Philadelphia. Puller told the young officer that the uniform did not fit. The youngster tried to defend the tailor, which was a mistake. Puller told him in no uncertain terms, This uniform is just not right. You go back there and tell old man Reed that this uniform is not going to pass.⁵

Davis recalled visiting the Puller’s quarters. Mrs. Puller was just as nice and gracious as she could be. If there was a dance at the club, the real gentleman in the whole crowd was Lewie Puller. He was a perfect host, dancer and conversationalist. He was gracious, a true Southern gentleman when he was required to be. Lewie was a great inspiration to me and one that had a significant influence on my career.⁶

Another officer that Davis remembered well was Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge, the executive officer of the school. Outstanding fellow. He was a great football player and a hero in his own right, and one that really got down and communicated with the new lieutenants on an eyeball-to-eyeball basis.⁷

After graduation from the Basic School in May 1939, Davis was assigned to sea duty aboard the heavy cruiser USS Portland (CA-33), nicknamed Sweet Pea. Portland, the sister ship of the ill-fated USS Indianapolis (CA-35), was home-ported in Long Beach, California, as part of Cruiser Division 5, Scouting Force. Davis reported aboard fully prepared to assume my duties as the Marine Detachment’s junior officer. The detachment consisted of two officers, three non-commissioned officers and 35 enlisted Marines. They served as an orderly for the ship’s captain, guarding the brig (jail), security details, and ceremonial duties. But most importantly they manned the ship’s 5-inch antiaircraft battery, on the upper deck. These secondary batteries were designed for defense against surface and aircraft threats.⁸

Davis was one of those unfortunates who suffered mal de mare. The Sweet Pea was an unstable ship that often rolled, even at anchor in a slight swell. It was reported that one time in heavy seas, the ship’s inclinometer, a devise that measured rolls, reached 42 degrees. Since 45 degrees was marked as the danger point, the ship was in some peril. Davis’ general quarters’ station was high on the foremast where the pitch, sway and gut-wrenching plunges were most extreme. I was cramped inside one of these directors to control the guns with assigned dials to watch and knobs to turn. The pitch and roll of the ship was greatly multiplied for those of us high up on the mast. I barely made it through the first drill. I was sick in my stateroom afterward and missed dinner. I could only crawl into my bunk and wish for death.⁹

In June 1939 the Portland deployed for the annual Fleet Problem (XXI), an eight-phase operation for the defense of the Hawaiian area and in the far reaches of the Pacific, that lasted 47 days. It was the first Fleet Problem and the last that did not include virtually all the major units of the fleet because of the worsening world tensions. The exercises were designed to provide training of commanders in estimating the situation and planning, scouting and screening, communications, coordination and convoy escort, seizure of advanced bases, and finally, decisive engagements.

Upon completion of the exercise, the fleet remained at Pearl Harbor. As relations with Japan worsened in the summer of 1940, President Roosevelt was convinced that permanently transferring the Navy’s Battle Force, which included the Scouting Force, to Pearl Harbor would be a restraining influence on Japan’s aggressive ambitions in the Pacific. The fleet transfer was strongly opposed by Admiral James O. Richardson, its commander-in-chief, who took the opposite position; that the fleet was more vulnerable. Richardson argued against the president’s decision so forcefully that he was relieved and replaced by Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. The Japanese attack on 7 December proved him correct.

Marine Major General Wilburt S. Brown was a captain aboard the USS Pennsylvania at the time of the fleet’s transfer. Roosevelt hit upon the idea of threatening Japan with an empty gun. For some reason he thought he was cowing the Japanese by keeping the fleet out there. The Japanese knew readiness for war much better than he did. Roosevelt’s decision played right into their hands. In late summer 1940, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese combined fleet, devised a plan to destroy the U.S. fleet in the Pacific at the onset of war—a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.¹⁰

Davis developed a strong interest in gunnery and while aboard Portland he applied for the Base Defense Weapons School at Quantico, Virginia, in July 1940. The school was touted as an antiaircraft and shore gun school which had some appeal to me. When you go to sea and live with the 5-inch guns in the AA battery and the detachment Marines for 15 months, you get interested in what you’re doing. He worked with early mechanical computers and technical material, which was right up his alley because of his engineering background from Georgia Tech.¹¹

I really enjoyed the course, but as it progressed, we started doing base defense employment problems on far-flung islands in the Pacific. I discovered that all gunnery school graduates were promptly assigned to Defense Battalions and shipped to remote Pacific Islands for duty. The Defense Battalions at Guam and Wake were captured by the Japanese early in the war. The latter island fell after a heroic 18-day fight. Such out-of-the-way coast defense positions did not appeal to me at all.

Davis avoided this assignment by some luck and some design.¹² Chesty [Lewie Puller] urged me to request duty with the newly formed 1st Marine Division. ‘Well, I’ll tell you Old Man (he always called me ‘Old Man’ throughout our long careers), there is a billet down in the 1st Marine Division at Guantanamo Bay Cuba where they need an antiaircraft officer. I think you would enjoy that.’ Davis took Puller at his word and requested assignment to the 1st Marine Division (The Old Breed). And that’s how I got out of the base defense battalions and into the Division.¹³

CHAPTER 3

The Old Breed: Special Weapons Battalion

Davis received orders to the 1st Marine Division at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the summer of 1941. He boarded one of the Navy’s transports at the Norfolk Navy Yard. In those days, traveling aboard one of the Navy’s finest was a lesson in resilience. The Marines were crammed into suffocating troop compartments—gear jammed everywhere, racks stacked four and five high, no room, suffocating heat, no air circulation and the smell—stale sweat, faint vomit and the overwhelming odor of body odor and fuel oil—permeating everything. The general consensus among the Marines was that they were just human baggage in transit—looked down upon by the crew and barely tolerated except for the use of their muscle power to help maintain the ship.

One sea story that made the rounds concerned an unfortunate Leatherneck who was shanghaied to paint the side of the ship. He was lowered over the side in the hot sun, armed with gallons of paint and numerous brushes. After several hours, he was retrieved, but only after venting his frustration in true artistic fashion. Emblazoned on the hull, for all the world to see, was his rendition of the ship’s name, Chaumont—Christ Help All US Marines On Naval Transports. True or not, the story was accepted as gospel by the Marines.

Being an Old Salt and wise to the ways of naval transports, Davis got his unit settled and then scouted around until he found a tiny stateroom with a porthole over the top bunk and climbed into the top bunk right under cool breeze from the porthole. He was awakened by two second lieutenants who demanded seniority rights to the bunk. I played ‘possum’ for a spell, he said, then I awoke slowly to rise up and say, ‘Welcome! As Senior Officer, you two can move into my room if you like.’ Davis knew that he was two months their senior and won the good-natured argument. We quickly became fast friends, he added.¹

On the voyage, measles broke out on the troop ship and the passengers were quarantined in one of the vacant regimental camps on a finger of land well away from the main encampments. To keep the men busy we organized a big working party to dig latrines for the encampment, Davis recalled. It got to be a way to spend time during the quarantine period.²

At the end of the quarantine period, they were packing up ready to leave when the absent battalion whose camp they were in returned. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Julian N. Bull Frisbee, accused the quarantined men of stealing his troops’ homemade furniture. Frisbee made us assemble the men and stood us out in the sun for a while and bulldozed us right under, Davis grumbled. Frisbee had a violent temper. I’m going to give you so much time to get all those things back in camp—or else! Davis said, He didn’t have to explain what ‘or else’ meant.³

We had no way of knowing what was missing, Davis recalled. I turned it over to the NCOs and the next thing I knew they were going in all different directions. Within a couple of hours the missing furniture was replaced. The NCOs had gone over to another vacant camp and brought all its stuff over, put it in Frisbee’s camp, and off we went. I didn’t hear any more about it because I received orders to return to the newly constructed Marine Barracks, New River, North Carolina.⁴

I got there in time to join the 1st Antiaircraft Machine-Gun Battery that had just been organized under the command of Captain Victor H. ‘Brute’ Krulak [later Lieutenant General and a leading figure in keeping the Corps from being abolished after World War II]. It was a great lesson to watch the Brute in action with the Division staff where it was obvious that he was already a ‘power’ even as a captain … he had a great influence on me over the years. Davis, initially assigned as a platoon commander, later became the battery executive officer.⁵

While in New River, the battery was expanded into a Special Weapons Battalion with three batteries: antiaircraft, and two antitank (37mm and 75mm half-tracks) under Major Robert B. Luckey—one of the finest gentleman I’ve ever been involved with. I really liked the man, Davis said. Great sense of humor and very competent.⁶

Luckey recalled in a 1973 oral history interview, ‘A’ Battery was commanded by Ray Davis. It had .50-caliber machine guns [and] was labeled an antiaircraft battery. ‘B’ Battery had 12 37mm antitank guns and was designated an antitank battery and ‘C’ Battery had four half-tracks with a French 75mm mounted in the stern. They were known as tank destroyers. The half-tracks were not very efficient. The 75s weren’t big enough to do any harm, and the .50-calibers weren’t much of a threat to any airplane. But that’s all we had, and that’s what we went to Guadalcanal with. The mission of the battalion was to support the Division from the point of view of antiaircraft and antitank service.⁷

The battalion stayed busy on maneuvers throughout the winter, which, even though North Carolina is considered to be in the south, from January through March can be extremely cold, especially for those in the field under canvas. Davis caught a break when he was assigned as an umpire for an Army training exercise at Fort Story, Virginia. Because of this we were able to live in some warm Army barracks. They were old, but they were warm, with good chow and facilities. Davis was promoted to first lieutenant in August 1941 and captain six months later.⁸

Davis was designated the Division antiaircraft officer, an assignment that made him a special staff officer in the Division Operations Section where he got to know several key members of the staff—Gerry Thomas, Wally Greene, Sammy Griffiths, Bill Buse, and Jim Masters, a battalion commander in the 1st Marines—who would play a major role in the Division’s future.⁹ As an antiaircraft specialist, Davis contributed to the various operations plans and employment of the battalions weapons. He also administered antiaircraft training and ran the Division antiaircraft school. "We had airplanes pull target sleeves across Onslow Beach for all the truck drivers and others with machine guns to fire for practice. They all took a shot at the sleeves at least once so that when we went to war, they had some experience under their belts.¹⁰

As a commander, Davis was responsible for the well-being of the men in his battery, including their moral health. In our tent camp we had some undue commotion late one night. One of my Marines coming off liberty smuggled his girlfriend into camp and into his tent at the far end of the street. She had so much fun that she moved to the next, and then the next. When the First Sergeant responded to all the excitement, she was halfway down the street and a line of men had formed outside the tent. She was escorted off the base. The First Sergeant told me that she had a pocketbook full of dollar bills, but when he accused her of prostitution, she objected, saying she only received a few ‘tips!’¹¹

The incident was not uncommon at Camp Lejeune during those early hectic days when the Division was forming up and thousands of vibrant young men prowled the area during their free time. Lejeune was at that time in a very isolated part of North Carolina, but girls came there from everywhere. They lived in attics, shanties, back rooms of roadside bars and restaurants and nearby motels. When liberty call went at camp, they seemed to appear from everywhere.¹²

In November, Brigadier General Alexander A. Archie Vandegrift was able to persuade the Commandant, General Thomas Holcomb, to allow him to leave Washington for field service. He was assigned as the 1st Marine Division’s assistant commander and given responsibility for its training. He arrived at Camp Lejeune on 26 November, just a little over a week before Pearl Harbor. My aide and I had gone down to Wilmington, which was on a Sunday, to have lunch at a restaurant we knew when the word came of Pearl Harbor and, of course, we lost no time in getting back to the base.¹³

Part Two

World War II: Central Pacific–Guadalcanal

CHAPTER 4

War

Pipe down, an excited voice shouted, as an announcement blared from a short-wave radio. We interrupt this program to bring you a special news broadcast. Pearl Harbor has been bombed! The word went out. Men gathered around the few radios in the tent camp. Davis remembered, Everybody stayed up all night listening to the news and thinking about getting ready to go [to war]. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, in February 1942, Davis was promoted to captain and then he was promoted about once a year after that, because of the rapid growth of the Corps.¹

Training at the huge New River, North Carolina, base took on a new importance. However, war scares were rampant and Davis’ battery was called out to defend the base. Reports of a hostile German dirigible coming across the Atlantic to drop bombs on us led to an organized AA defense around our camps. We had to dig pits all round Camp Lejeune and mount our machine guns and stand round the clock watches to shoot down this dirigible. I performed my only engineering project in the Corps … I supervised the building of a low bridge so that we could move our guns wherever they were needed. The report soon proved to be false, and training continued until the following summer.²

While the airship rumor proved to be false, German U-boats operated off the North Carolina coast as early as mid-January 1942. On 19 January, the SS City of Atlanta was torpedoed by a U-123, killing all but three of her 47-man crew. The U-boat attacked three more ships just hours later. The Outer Banks of North Carolina soon earned the name Torpedo Junction because so many ships were sunk.

Thousands of men were ordered to Marine Barracks, New River, North Carolina, to bring the 1st Marine Division up to war strength—Young recruits only recently out of boot training … others were older; first sergeants yanked off ‘planks’ in Navy yards, sergeants from recruiting duty, gunnery sergeants who had fought in France, perennial privates with disciplinary records, a yard long.³

The expansion between 7 December 1941 and 1 May 1942 brought the Division from a small pre-war nucleus to a war-strength division. This buildup presented the serious problem of training, equipping, and quartering the men, which was further complicated by the early detachment of a provisional brigade for immediate service in the South Pacific.

By the summer of 1942, Japan had expanded its conquest across a vast distance of the Pacific and threatened Australia. (U.S. Army, ‘Western Pacific: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II’)

The formation of this brigade built around the 7th Marines (reinforced) withdrew a disproportionate number of officers, non-commissioned officers and men trained and experienced in amphibious warfare. We were told at that time, and this affected our morale very badly, that no Marine division would participate as a division in World War II, Major William Twining said. "The