MORE ON ANDY MALANOWSKI

I had an amazing reception to my recent post about my uncle, Andy Malanowski. I heard from many of my cousins, which was wonderful, notably Dave Powell, the husband of my cousin Christine Malanowski Powell. He has constructed an impressive Powell family tree which by his good grace (or maybe it’s the grace of Chris) includes a lot about the Malanowskis. Dave not only hipped me to the fact that the Marine Corps had the wrong birthdate for Andy (1915, not 1914), but he also sent me a couple of excellent photos of Andy in his dress blues wearing his sharpshooter’s medal, studio shots thought to have been taken around 1942  (certainly they were after 1940, as we see from Andy’s sergeant stripes).

I also heard from two other readers, the historians Jeffrey McMeans of Simi Valley, California, who has made a study of the battle of Guadalcanal, and from Peter Flahavin, who has visited Guadalcanal many times from his home in Australia, and who maintains an amazing website about Guadalcanal that is full of photographs from his various visits, but also many pictures dating back to the war. One of the things I found fairly mind-blowing is that the very area where Andy and the 1st marines were engaged in combat is today something of a tourist destination, with lovely hotels and a marina and a national museum. Peter sent some photos for orientation:

Above is a WW II vintage photo showing the battle area, with locations of present-day landmarks superimposed. The marines landed just east of where the Mendana Hotel is (just to the right of it.) They then moved across the open area, up the hill through the coconut grove, and onto the ridge where the King Solomon Hotel now stands, which is where the battle with the Japanese began. When teh marines retreated, they did a kind of a reverse bobby pin, and came down to the beach where the Point Cruz Yacht Club is now located. Below is a photo Peter took from an off-shore vantage. The red line drawn from the second box on the left connects to the King Solomon Hotel. “Every time I visit the Canal,” Peter writes, “I stay at the King Solomon, which is built on the side of the Hill 83 where the Battalion was trapped. A cable car goes up to the various room levels. There isn’t a trip I make that I don’t think of Malanowski and his BAR holding off the Japs  as the guys retreated to the beach.”

From the description of a clearing between the trees and the beach as the place where Andy made his stand, Peter surmises that Andy died on what is now the grounds of the Solomons National Museum. A stream runs through that area. “It could well be that a Japanese using the stream bank as cover got him,” Peter writes. “It was sort of a natural trench that both sides used in later fighting. One marine writes of finding a dead office in the stream bed in November 1942 surrounded by ten dead Japs.”

Peter shared these emails with some friends, including John Innes, is a historian who has lived on Guadalcanal since 1995, and Ewan Stevenson, a New Zealander who was born on the Canal in 1972 and has extensively dived and explored the place.  John wrote an email describing a visit he made to this area with a marine named Stan McLeod, who, like Andy, was a Platoon Sergeant that day, and who eventually became a brigadier general.  “ Stan McLeod was a Platoon Sergeant on that mission,” John writes. “He saw the bright orange mortar explosion that killed the Executive Officer.  He was walking towards him when the mortar hit. The blast knocked Stan face down facing the other way. Blood over his face from the Coral. Later, under enemy fire as he was helping a wounded officer (who had called out “each man for himself” after the mortar hit!)  back down to the beach, he passed Malanowski. Stan said to him `Are you okay, Ski?’  Malanowski said `Yes, Mac, you go on down I’ll just be a few minutes.’ Stan said he could hear Malanowski’s BAR firing as they made there way down, and then stop.” John is of the opinion that Andy was killed on the grounds of the Kitano Mendana Hotel.

In his email, Ewan Stevenson says that just last week he was speaking to a man named Gene Leslie, who is the son Dale Leslie, a marine pilot who flew over the battle site, saw the besieged battalion, saw that they were spelling out “HELP” with theit T-shirts, and radioed news of their dire circumstances to Chesty Puller. “We were talking just last week on the phone, and as often does, we talk about that day 27 Sept. I believe there is a great deal we don’t know about that day, and it’s not a glorious part of USMC history but not all history is glorious. One of the things we talked about was the absolute heroic feat of Malanowski that day. How he did his own last stand and help keep the following Japanese at bay. His actions certainly helped saved many lives, no doubt. ”