Almost no Marine of the U.S. 1st Marine Division stationed on Guadalcanal — an island 90 miles long and 25 miles wide in the Solomons Archipelago of the South Pacific Ocean — had experienced combat before stepping onto the island. The struggle, which had settled into a repetitive daily pattern since Aug. 10, 1942, had set the Marines on edge.
Stultifying heat and humidity enveloped the men in constant sweat while swarms of insects of biblical proportions greedily feasted on the men, who themselves felt the undeniable gnawing of hunger. Dysentery and malaria were rampant, so much so that one Marine recalled, writes historian Ian Toll, “It was so bad and so prevalent that a solid bowel movement was a cause for rejoicing.”
Marines could set their watches to when Japanese bombers would appear overhead — just shortly after noon — to pound their location. And, after Aug. 16, 1942, harrowing nighttime bombardments by Japanese submarines, ships and planes. Dubbed “Washing Machine Charley” or “Louise the Louse,” the nighttime raids by air did little damage but kept the Marines awake and on edge.
The “Guadalcanal twitch,” where Marines would execute a half-awake rolling maneuver into his foxhole, became the norm.
Amid this backdrop, the prevailing thought had become — almost as consistent as the nightly G4M “Betty” bomber attacks — where was the U.S. Navy?
Battle of Savo Sound
On Aug. 7, 1942, 19,000 men of the U.S. 1st Marine Division had stormed ashore on Guadalcanal. Although the Marines handily outnumbered the Japanese garrison and swiftly captured the airfield, their victory, writes historian Mark Grimsley, was deceptive.
The invasion, called Operation Watchtower, had been cobbled together in haste. There was little unity in its oversight, with separate commanders responsible for the landing force, the naval screening force and the three aircraft carriers (USS Enterprise, USS Saratoga and USS Wasp) covering the invasion.
“Most critically,” writes Grimsley, “the invasion has been mounted without first completing one of the cardinal tasks of amphibious warfare: the isolation of the beachhead from a naval counterstroke by the enemy.”
Said counterstroke occurred less than 24 hours after the initial Marine landing, with a mammoth Japanese air strike consisting of 53 Zero fighters and two-engine Betty bombers. The resulting attack sank one Australian heavy cruiser, HMAS Canberra, and three American heavy cruisers, USS Quincy, USS Vincennes and USS Astoria, as well as damaged other Allied vessels.
As the burning hulks of the Canberra and Astoria drifted aimlessly through the Sealark Channel, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher considered his carriers to be too vulnerable and made the decision to withdraw them.
For the Marines stationed on Guadalcanal, looking out over the empty “Ironbottom Sound” on Aug. 9, 1942, was an exceedingly terrifying moment.
“What’s happened to the Navy?” Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division, wondered aloud, as recalled in Toll’s The Conquering Tide.
“I don’t believe the first team has taken the field, General,” replied a staff sergeant.
For nearly six months following the Battle of Savo Island, the Marines would battle on, ultimately to victory — but at a heavy cost.
Between the Marines and U.S. Army soldiers, approximately 1,598 U.S. troops were killed, and more than 4,700 were wounded. Nearly 300 Marine, Army and Allied aviators flying from Henderson Field were killed. By comparison, however, close to 31,000 Japanese troops were killed in Guadalcanal.
“S--- hit the fan”
“One miserable night on that crocodile-infested island, a few officers decided the division deserved a medal — not for heroism in the traditional sense, but simply for surviving that dreadful place,” writes Chase Tomlin for the National World War II Museum.
What started as a jest soon became cast in bronze.
In postwar interviews, Lt. Col. Merrill B. Twining recalled that, “One evening on Guadalcanal … a group of us were discussing the situation — the enemy, the lack of support, chow, ammunition, and everything else, when I suggested that we design a medal to commemorate the campaign.”
Twining continued, “We all got a good laugh out of that.”
A popular idiom of the time — “Let George do it!” — had become the division’s unofficial motto, according to the Marine Corps University Press. The phrase meant to leave an undesirable task for another. By the end of the Guadalcanal campaign, every Marine — 1st Division or not — had become “George.”
As a result, the men christened it as the “George Medal.”
The men roped in Capt. Martin Clemens, a Cambridge-educated British military officer and coastwatcher on Guadalcanal, to translate their title into Latin for an added touch of class. The loose translation of “Faciat Georgius” adorned the medal.
In addition to Clemens, Capt. Donald Dickson, an adjutant of the 5th Marines who would later become a well-known illustrator and editor for Leatherneck magazine, sketched up the design.
Dark humor, the bedrock on which the military — and in particular the Marines — stands, was on full display.
On the front, an outstretched hand, presumably a U.S. Navy admiral, drops a “hot potato” as a scrambling Marine runs with his arms outstretched to receive it. A large Saguaro cactus looms to the left, a nod to the codename “Cactus” for the island of Guadalcanal.
The reverse side requires less deciphering. It is, as Owen Linlithgow writes for the Marine Corps University Press, “less subtle and more scatological in nature.”
“Original suggestions for a depiction of a Japanese soldier relieving himself, strategically placed near a large running office fan, were eventually overruled in favor of a more conservative cow exercising the same bodily action,” Linlithgow continued.
The formal, sardonic inscription reads: “In fond remembrance of the happy days spent from Aug. 7th, 1942, to Jan. 5th, 1943 – U.S.M.C.”
The George is cast
When the 1st Marine Division arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in January 1943, for rest and recuperation, the men set out to make “Faciat Georgius” a reality. Lt. Herbert C. Merillat, the division’s press officer, was thwarted on the first try after a local manufacturer turned him away due to fears of repercussions for casting an award that was not official.
In a previously unpublished letter to the 1st Marine Division Association written in 1974, Cpl. Vernon C. Stimpel provided further details as to how the medal was cast.
According to Stimpel, who was the division’s intelligence section clerk, he took the concept of the medal to a small engraving shop near Little Collins Street in Melbourne.
There, the engravers created a crude sand cast mold with Stimpel donating his own “herringbone twill utility uniform to be cut apart and serve as the source for the first run of the medals’ ribbons.”
In the letter, he recalled that 100 awards were to be cast. Stimpel himself owned medal number 45 of 100. The ribbon, according to the lore, would only be legitimate if it had been washed in the muddy waters of the Lunga or Matanikau rivers on Guadalcanal.
According to the Marine Corps University Press, “the distinctive stripes of a Navy admiral were clearly seen on the sleeve of the arm on the medal’s front,” but as word spread among Guadalcanal veterans and the demand grew, “a second run of 400 awards were made by the same engraving shop. Over time, each subsequent casting began to lose the original detail of the first batch, with small details such as the admiral’s sleeve markings becoming less prominent. This later contract also forfeited the traditional metal pin and clasp; they were presented with a comically oversized laundry bag safety pin instead.”
In addition to the medal, a deliberately sarcastic certificate accompanied each award, noting that the Marine had been there when “s--- hit the fan.”
But while the medal itself was a joke, the process of receiving one became remarkably bureaucratic.
On April 15, 1943, the Division Intelligence Section issued an official circular outlining eligibility, production and distribution, according to the National World War II Museum.
To qualify, a Marine had to have served on Guadalcanal, Tulagi or adjacent islands “during the heroic period which dates from the landing attacks … until the time of the Division’s relief.” Marines evacuated due to wounds or illness still qualified, as did reinforcements from the 7th Marines and U.S. Army’s 164th Infantry, who “did their share in the dark days.”
Those who fought briefly or were latecomers to the battle did not.
According to the museum, to receive the medal, “It required the endorsement of a witness in the recipient’s unit who could personally verify that the Marine had, in the certificate’s blunt words, truly been there ‘when the s--- hit the fan.’ Also, a committee planned to review each submission, ‘ensuring that none receive the medal who do not rate it.’”
The first Marine to receive the George Medal? None other than Gen. Vandegrift.
Presently, there is no way to determine how many original Australian-made medals were produced, as rumors and unverified stories from veterans claim that the original casting mold broke during the order for 400 more George Medals.
However, in 1978, the U.S. Marine Corps History and Museums Division received a mold for manufacturing the George Medal from the son of Gen. James J. Keating, who served as the commanding officer of 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, on Guadalcanal
According to the Marine’s family, Keating had it commissioned after the war’s end to create more George Medals for veterans who had previously been unable to obtain one. These were presented at various veteran reunions and confirm that there have been at least three iterations of the George Medal.
The George Medal is not a Distinguished Service Meal. It’s not a Purple Heart, nor a Medal of Honor. It is, however, a badge of honor for the men who celebrated the passing of a solid stool, sweated it out amid malarial fever dreams and endured nearly continuous shelling from a fanatical and brutal enemy.
It is, writes the museum, “a keepsake that says, ‘You survived Hell. Here is something for that.’”
Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
