#5 Wednesday 8/21- Hiking Bloody Ridge

Good day everyone! It is now the close of Wednesday when I am writing this. It's been another adventurous day with many more stories to come so keep reading. Today was movement day. That is I moved from one location to another. I checked out of my hotel and went to the airport and boarded a puddle jumper and flew to a remote island location called Munda. We'll the city/ town/ village is called Munda and the island is New Georgia which is a few hundred miles north west of the island of Guadalcanal. More on that later.

There are 4 of us who are being forward deployed to Munda so we didn't have to go to the provincial hospital today and I convinced our team lead to let us instead do some PT and a hike. So we decided to hike what is known as "bloody ridge." Now bloody ridge is the site of a crucial battle for Guadalcanal and is argued by many WW2 scholars as the turning point for the eventual demise of the Japanese military. I'll explain. After the marines captured the airfield on Guadalcanal and renaming it Henderson field (named after a marine aviator who died in the battle of midway) the Japanese were nit very happy about it. Yesterday I mentioned the battle of alligator creek and the destruction of an entire company element of the Japanese. About 80 soldiers died at that battle. That loss put Shockwaves through the Japanese because up til that point they had been able to move and Conquer at will so they redoubled their efforts and landed 3 regiments about 3000 soldiers to retake Henderson field. Very long story short after they landed the marines launched a raid against the japs rear with the marine raiders and parachute regiments. They didn't know how big a force they had so when they started getting into a fierce fight they withdrew back to their main lines of defense. There was disagreement by the main general about the defense of the airfield. One general thought the main Japanese attack would happen from the south but the main general disagreed. They finally agreed to put those two regimens that had raided the Japanese on the ridges south of the airfield because they didn't think they would attack there so they could rest there. The main Japanese force attacked those ridges with three regiments vs 1 regimen of the marines. It was 800 US vs 3000 Japanese on those ridges. The Japanese charged at night over and over again multiple times. They pushed the marines back to a second and even third ridge. The commander of the marines was named Edeson and that hill is named after him. While his soldiers hunkered down he stood and directed the battle eventually pushing back the Japanese. Had the marines faltered there they would have been able to exploit that gap and flood onto the airfield and most likely push the US out of Guadalcanal. Up to that point it was the largest loss the Japanese ever had. 3 full regimens were decimated. At Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, enlisted recruits finish their training with the 54-hour final exam called "The Crucible". In the final stage, recruits scale a 700 feet (210 m) mountain dubbed The Reaper. At the peak, Edson's Medal of Honor citation is displayed. The recruits read and are addressed about it. They are then awarded their Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblems by their senior drill instructors, signifying them as full-fledged Marines. Cruelly one of the most epic and decisive battles of the pacific! See pictured below of bloody ridge.

I'm at the top of hill 123 or Edmon's Ridge and I'm pointing to a fox hole that's still there. It's just grown in my the vegetation.

Looking south towards hills 80. Those were the first hills the Japanese attached. They're last charges where up this he'll from that valley you can see in this picture here.