Guadalcanal Diary

New York: Random House, 1943. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. good. [10], 263, [1] pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. Illustrations. Endpaper maps. Richard William Tregaskis (November 28, 1916 - August 15, 1973) was an American journalist and author whose best-known work is Guadalcanal Diary (1943), an account of just the first several weeks (in August - September 1942) of the U.S. Marine Corps invasion of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during World War II. This was actually a six-month-long campaign. Tregaskis served as a war correspondent during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.) Assigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. He subsequently covered the war in Europe against Germany and Italy. Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, "This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. . . . Until the author's departure in a B-17 bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks."

As a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, Guadalcanal Diary is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. military personnel. Guadalcanal marked the transition by the Allies from defensive operations to the strategic offensive in the Pacific Theater. On August 7, 1942, eleven thousand US Marines landed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal Islands in the South Pacific. It was the first major Allied offensive against Japanese forces; the first time in history that a combined air, land, and sea assault had ever been attempted; and, after six months of vicious fighting, a crushing defeat for the Empire of Japan and a major turning point in the Pacific War. Volunteer combat correspondent Richard Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on hand to witness the invasion of Guadalcanal. He risked life and limb to give American readers a soldier's experience of the war in the Pacific, from the suffocating heat and humidity to the unique terror of fighting in tall, razor-sharp grass and in crocodile-infested jungle streams against a concealed enemy. In understated yet graceful prose, Tregaskis details the first two months of the campaign and describes the courage and camaraderie of young marines who prepared for battle knowing that one in four of them wouldn't make it home. An instant bestseller when it was first published in 1943 and the basis for a popular film of the same name, Guadalcanal Diary set the standard for World War II reportage. Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the literary events of its time," it is a masterpiece of war journalism whose influence can be found in classic works such as John Hersey's Hiroshima, Michael Herr's Dispatches, and Dexter Filkins's The Forever War.