On the Canal

the long version

A straightforward, gripping tale from the Marines that stormed ashore on Guadalcanal in World War II. Told with humor and honesty in a no-holds-barred approach that only a Marine who was there could tell. Excerpt on firing a rifle grenade: "I jammed the rifle stock tight against my shoulder, raised myself up off the ground to a kneeling position, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle went bang! And the recoil jarred it loose from my grip. The rifle smacked me hard in the jaw. With that, I went down on my face while the little bluebirds started going tweet, tweet, tweet around my head. 'Did I hit it?' I asked. 'Yeah, you hit it, ' Flash said. 'The thing just didn't work. 'We finally ran into somebody from another unit, a guy who really understood how the new style grenade was supposed to work. We explained our misfortune to him, and he asked us did you pull the firing pin out!"