THE COAST GUARD @ GUADALCANAL

The story of Guadalcanal is usually told in the language of Marines and naval battles—Henderson Field, the Tokyo Express, and the long nights of Ironbottom Sound. But running beneath that familiar narrative is another current, quieter but no less decisive: the work of the United States Coast Guard. Their presence in the Solomons was not ornamental. It was essential. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The campaign’s success rested, in no small part, on their hands.

What strikes me first is how ordinary their expertise was. These were men trained in surfboats, rescue stations, and coastal patrols—craft shaped by routine, not glory. Yet when the nation needed amphibious skill in 1942, it was the Coast Guard that possessed it. Nineteen of the twenty‑three transports in the Guadalcanal invasion force carried Coast Guard crews. They were the ones who put Marines ashore, boatload after boatload, in the first uncertain hours of the campaign. They were the ones who returned again and again with ammunition, fuel, rations, and the wounded. Their war was not the dramatic clash of fleets but the relentless grind of small‑boat work under fire.

The Coast Guard also conducted ant-submarine operations. Higgins landing craft were loaded with depth charges and assigned sectors to patrol in the waters around the island. This was dangerous work. One night a Japanese submarine surfaced and sunk a Higgins boat with its deck gun and then began killing the survivors with small arms fire. One “coastie” survived this ordeal by pretending to be dead.

Despite the danger, there is something morally clarifying about that kind of labor. It is not glamorous. It is not celebrated. It is simply necessary. And necessity has a way of revealing character. The Coast Guard’s contribution to Guadalcanal was not a single moment but a pattern—steady, disciplined, uncomplaining service that kept the beachhead alive. In a campaign defined by scarcity, their constancy became a form of courage.

Yet even within that quiet pattern, one moment stands apart. On September 27, 1942, near the Matanikau River, a battalion of Marines found itself trapped under heavy Japanese fire. The evacuation seemed impossible. The beach was raked by machine guns. The boats would have to run straight into it. And it was a Coast Guardsman—Signalman First Class Douglas Munro—who stepped forward.

Munro’s actions that day have been recounted often, but they bear repeating because they reveal the moral center of the service he represented. He led the rescue boats in, placing his own craft between the enemy and the Marines. He drew fire so others could load. He freed a grounded boat under fire. He silenced a machine‑gun nest with his bow guns. And when he was mortally wounded during the withdrawal, his last question was simple and unadorned: Did they get off? When told yes, he smiled.

There is a purity to that moment—a man whose vocation was service, fulfilling it to the end. Munro did not die in a grand naval battle or a sweeping assault. He died doing what the Coast Guard had done every day of the campaign: protecting others. His Medal of Honor is not an outlier; it is the distilled expression of the institution’s character.

When I think about Guadalcanal now, I see the Coast Guard’s presence as a kind of moral counterpoint to the violence around them. They were not there to destroy but to deliver. They were not there to seize territory but to sustain life. Their courage was logistical, practical, embodied. And in a war that often rewarded spectacle, theirs was a courage that asked for no audience.

Institutions at their best form people capable of such work—people who understand that duty is not a performance but a commitment. The Coast Guard on Guadalcanal reminds us that the strength of a nation rests not only on its warriors but on its stewards: those who carry the wounded, those who bring the supplies, those who keep the fragile machinery of survival running when everything around them is breaking.

Guadalcanal was a turning point in the Pacific War. But it was also a testament to the quiet goods of ordinary life—skill, discipline, reliability—brought to bear in extraordinary circumstances. The Coast Guard did not ask to be the backbone of the landings. They simply were. And in doing so, they left a legacy of service that deserves to be remembered alongside the more famous stories of the campaign.

Their work was not loud. But it was indispensable. And sometimes, indispensable things are the ones that teach us the most about courage.

 

CAN THE CLASSICS SPEAK TO THE POOR?

My Experience 

During the 2009-2010 school year, I was back at the Paseo Academy of the Fine and Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, this time as an instructional coach. (An instructional coach is part of a school’s leadership team who coaches the teachers to improve matching best practices in teaching strategies with effective use of the district’s curriculum.) One day the principal brought me a student and directed me to tutor the student on Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Apparently, the student was having difficulty in the classroom understanding the text to the point teacher had referred the student to the office.

Even though working directly with students was not in my official job description, I had learned not to say “ no” to this principal unless I had a very good reason and I did not have one. So I accepted the principal’s directive and met with the student privately while the principal returned to her routine duties.

The student was an African American female who was a junior at the school. Although she was friendly and appeared to be bright and eager to learn, I questioned whether she could learn from a dead white male as I was briefly reminded of the 1999 movie The Sixth Sense in which psychologist Malcolm Crowe played by Bruce Willis befriends Cole, a patient of his, a traumatized boy played by Haley Joel Osment. A highlight of the film was when Cole confesses to Malcolm, “I see dead people.” Thus, I was concerned that my student would see only “dead people” as she began her study of this piece of classic literature.

I was wrong about her and I was glad. We met several times a week over the next month or so. She was present at all our tutoring sessions and on time, willing and eager to discuss her engagement with the text. I could see her heart-felt connection to Willy Loman, a tired traveling salesman, of his deferred and often quashed dreams that led to his suicide. I could also sense that her connection to Loman was not merely intellectual in that she perhaps knew an adult relative or a friend of the family who had Loman-like deferred or quashed dreams. Since she did not discuss a possible emotional connection, I respected her privacy and did not go there.

But isn’t this why some literature is deemed “classic”, in that such literature reaches beyond boundaries that divide us and unite us because classic literature speaks to the human condition? It would appear so in this case as Arthur Miller had penned a masterpiece of a play that spoke to a student who is a human first and then an African American female living in Kansas City.

 

 

The Classics Behind Bars

Some years ago I came across a small article—Wall Street Journal, I think—describing a program that brought the Greek and Roman classics into a prison classroom. The premise was disarmingly simple: give ex‑felons the intellectual and moral resources they were never offered, and you might give them a fighting chance at not returning to the life that landed them behind bars. What struck me wasn’t the novelty of the idea but its quiet confidence in the humanities as instruments of moral repair. In an age that treats the classics as decorative or elitist, here they were being used as tools of survival.

The professor in the story taught Homer and Gilgamesh, Aristotle on anger, the Greek tragedians. She asked men who had lived hard, violent lives to wrestle with Achilles’ rage, with Heracles’ self‑destruction, with the long arc of consequence that follows a single ungoverned impulse. And the men responded. They recognized themselves in these ancient figures—not in the heroism but in the volatility, the wounded pride, the inability to imagine the downstream cost of a moment’s fury. The old stories gave them a vocabulary for their own interior lives, a way to name the forces that had shaped them long before the criminal justice system ever did.

What moved me most was the program’s underlying wager: that human beings, even those who have done real harm, can be strengthened by serious thought. That moral imagination is not a luxury but a lifeline. These men were not being lectured about responsibility; they were being invited to see themselves in a tragic tradition that understands how fragile agency can be. And in that recognition, something like dignity re‑entered the room.

As such, they were treated not as cases but as thinkers—people capable of reflection, capable of change. They were equipped to ask questions such as “What would Shakespeare/Burke/the American Founders do in the situation in which I now find myself” and then discover answers to their dilemmas that would expand and amplify their moral imaginations.

Programs like this are small, almost invisible in the larger debates about crime and punishment. But they reveal something institutions once knew: that formation precedes behavior, and that without a moral vocabulary, a person is left defenseless against his own impulses. The classics do not redeem anyone. But they do what good institutions have always done—they give a person the means to understand himself, and in that understanding, the possibility of choosing differently.

Conclusion

Based upon my forementioned limited experience and a newspaper article, yes, classic literature can speak to the poor, the marginalized, across boundaries that tend to divide us, to give us the intellectual tools and the moral imagination for all of us to find success in our lives; for if it cannot, I maintain that it ceases to be the classics. But the genius of the Western Canon is that it can unify us out of the many divergent backgrounds from whence we came.

 

TALARICO AND THE BIG TEN'S SECRET CLOCK

If you missed Saturday night’s college football game between the Western Michigan Broncos of the Mid America Conference (MAC) and the Michigan Wolverines of the Big Ten Conference (B1G) you missed the “second heard around the world.” Not merely willing to play for a fat paycheck by showing up in uniform in Ann Arbor’s “Big House” stadium of over 100,000 fans, the visiting Broncos outplayed the hometown Wolverines for 40+ minutes as they took a 12-7 lead to win the game, despite being a four-touchdown underdog.

Hold on a darn second (wordplay intended)- the refs penalized the Broncos and put one second back on the clock allowing Michigan to “win” 13-12. Despite the fact that both the stadium and play booth clocks read 0:00 with Western Michigan winning, the B1G’s explanation that they had an official secret clock not synced with the other clocks the rest of America thought displayed the official time. As egregious as that secret clock incident was, we fans were assured that it never happen again.

Hold on a darn second (wordplay intended)- US Senate candidate in Texas James Talarico seems to also to possess a secret clock, albeit a metaphorical one. And Talarico may well use it to get his extra second against his opponent Ken Paxton, but if Talarico is successful, the real losers will be the good folks of Texas, not Paxton.oldHold

Talarico was interviewed by Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor on September 10. In that interview Talarico renounced nearly every controversial view he has held. Among the changes:

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:          God is non-binary.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         I was being provocative.

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:           Opposed restrictions on trans athletes.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         Now opposes biological boys playing in girls’ sports.

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:           There are six biological sexes.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         There are two sexes with some genetic abnormalities.

 

60-Minute Stadium Clock:           Voted against Texas SB14 which opposed trans surgeries & puberty blockers for minors.

Extra-Second Secret Clock:         Now opposes trans surgeries for minors.

 

Most Americans, Texans included, encourage and even expect our politicians to re-examine evidence and change their minds as needed. But what Talarico did during that interview was not that, it was a wholesale full frontal lobotomy.  Say what you want to about Jasmine Crockett, she would have doubled down, stood her ground, and fired both barrels (metaphorically speaking, of course!) to share her beliefs. Apparently, Talarico’s staff, consultants, and handlers, and even Talarico himself, thought this was a good idea perhaps based on what the B1G got away with in front of millions on a Labor Day weekend.

In the interview, Talarico showed himself to be a mere corrupt politician. Talarico is not corrupt in the same manner as he charges his opponent, Talarico has a corruption in his soul- a corruption in the same way as the end justifies the means. The people of Texas deserve a candidate for the US Senate of a major party who is proud of his beliefs, who will double down and stand his ground, and will not change his mind on the core tenets of his belief system as the polls change in a tight race.

Football is a game. Elections are not. And it is vital in our constitutional republic we citizens can have trust in trustworthy candidates. A final word- I will be rooting for my Sooners to wallop those pesky Wolverines this Saturday in Ann Arbor!

THE FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE LEADERSHIP ON GUADALCANAL

The tragedy of the Goettge Patrol is not, at its core, a story about cowardice or incompetence among the Marines who stepped off that boat west of the Matanikau River. It is a story about leadership failure at the level of intelligence judgment—a failure that cost brave men their lives before the Guadalcanal campaign had even found its footing. To understand it properly, one must hold two truths together: the men of the patrol acted with courage, discipline, and trust; their leaders sent them into an impossible situation built on hope, misreading, and wishful thinking.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge was not an amateur. He was a seasoned Marine officer, a veteran of Haiti and China, a man respected across the division for his competence and character. But intelligence leadership is not merely the accumulation of experience. It is the discipline of skepticism, the refusal to let desire shape interpretation, and the moral responsibility to protect the men who rely on your judgment. On 12 August 1942, that discipline failed.

The failure began with a story—one told by a Japanese warrant officer who had been given alcohol and who claimed that a group of Japanese west of the Matanikau were starving, sick, and ready to surrender. It continued with the sighting of what appeared to be a white flag. In the first week of the campaign, when the Marines were still trying to understand the enemy’s psychology, these signals were tempting. They suggested that the Japanese might break early, that the perimeter could be secured with minimal bloodshed, that the enemy’s will was already eroding.

But intelligence leadership cannot afford temptation. It must assume deception until proven otherwise. It must assume the enemy is capable, cunning, and committed. It must assume that the jungle hides more than it reveals. Goettge—normally a cautious officer—allowed himself to believe a narrative that fit his hopes more than the facts. He believed he could walk into the jungle and negotiate surrender. He believed the Japanese would behave as Western soldiers might behave under similar conditions. He believed the terrain would not swallow his patrol whole.

The men who followed him did not fail. They did what Marines do: they trusted their officer, they boarded the boat, they stepped into the dark, and when the ambush came, they fought with everything they had. Their courage is not diminished by the fact that they were sent into a trap. If anything, their bravery is sharpened by the knowledge that they faced a situation they never should have been placed in.

The failure was not tactical. It was moral and intellectual. Intelligence leadership must be governed by restraint—by the willingness to say “no,” by the humility to admit uncertainty, by the discipline to demand corroboration. Goettge’s patrol had none of these safeguards. It had hope, a single prisoner’s story, and the illusion of a white flag. That is not intelligence. That is wishful thinking dressed in the language of opportunity.

The consequences were immediate and brutal. The Japanese used deception with precision. The patrol was funneled into dense vegetation, pinned down, and destroyed. Goettge was killed early. Only three men escaped. The rest died in a fight they never had a chance to win.

Yet the tragedy did produce clarity. After the patrol, Marine commanders abandoned any trust in Japanese surrender signals. Patrols became larger, more deliberate, more heavily armed. Intelligence officers learned—quickly and painfully—that the Japanese would not break easily, would not surrender readily, and would use every tool of deception available to them. The lesson was written not in doctrine but in blood.

The Goettge Patrol stands today as a reminder that intelligence leadership is not merely analysis. It is stewardship. It is the moral obligation to protect the men who depend on your judgment. When that obligation falters, even briefly, brave men pay the price.

The men of the patrol deserve to be remembered for their courage. Goettge deserves to be remembered for his service—and for his mistake. And the Marine Corps deserves to remember the lesson: in war, intelligence is not the art of believing what you hope is true. It is the discipline of refusing to be deceived.

 

COLONEL WHALING AND THE MORAL IMAGINATION OF INSTITUTIONS UNDER PRESSURE

The story of Colonel William J. Whaling and his Guadalcanal scouts is, at its core, a story about institutional formation under duress—about how a single officer, working inside a battered division on a hostile island, could reshape the moral and operational imagination of the Marine Corps. It is the kind of story I return to often: a moment when an institution is forced to decide whether it will shrink to its fears or grow toward its ideals.

Whaling arrived on Guadalcanal at a time when the 1st Marine Division was learning, painfully, that its inherited habits were insufficient for the jungle. Patrols were too loud, too large, too linear. The Japanese moved like smoke; the Marines moved like a parade. The institution was not yet equal to its responsibilities.

What strikes me is that Whaling did not respond with cynicism or complaint. He responded with creation. He built something that did not exist—an improvised scout‑sniper school, a composite detachment of Marines trained in stalking, camouflage, silent movement, and the disciplined patience of small‑team reconnaissance. He taught Marines how to see again, how to listen, how to move with humility through terrain that punished arrogance. In other words, he restored the moral imagination of the division by restoring its sensory imagination.

This is the deeper lesson: institutions lose their way when they lose their ability to perceive reality. They drift, they grow sentimental, they cling to old forms. Whaling’s contribution was not merely tactical; it was epistemological. He gave the division a new way of knowing the world. His scouts became the eyes and ears of the 1st Marine Division, and in doing so, they became its conscience—reminding the larger body that survival depended on truth, discipline, and the courage to abandon comfortable habits.

There is also something profoundly human in Whaling’s method. He did not create a school of supermen. He selected ordinary Marines and taught them to trust small teams, quiet movement, and the slow accumulation of understanding. He believed that excellence was not a matter of heroic temperament but of practiced attention. In that sense, his scouts embodied a kind of moral realism: the belief that institutions are strengthened not by grand gestures but by the steady formation of people who can see clearly and act decisively.

The Guadalcanal scouts also reveal the paradox of leadership in crisis. Whaling was not the division commander; he was not the architect of the campaign. Yet his work shaped the division’s future more than many decisions made at higher echelons. This is a reminder that institutional renewal often begins at the edges—where someone sees a problem clearly, refuses to accept drift, and builds a small, durable solution that eventually becomes doctrine.

When I think about Whaling, I think about the leaders who refuse to let their institutions become smaller than their responsibilities. He did not wait for permission. He did not ask for a committee. He saw Marines dying on patrols because the institution had not yet learned how to fight in the jungle, and he acted. His scouts became the prototype for Marine reconnaissance and scout‑sniper doctrine for decades. But more importantly, they became a testament to what one person can do when he insists that an institution must be equal to the world it inhabits.

In the end, Whaling’s legacy is not simply that he taught Marines how to move through the jungle. It is that he taught them how to move through uncertainty—quietly, intelligently, humbly, and with a disciplined imagination. That is the kind of leadership I admire: the kind that enlarges the institution by enlarging the people within it.