Our Family’s Hero: Andy Malanowski, USMC

I am looking forward to Sunday’s debut of the HBO miniseries The Pacific, which focuses on the experiences of the marines who fought America’s island war against Japan. One of the early episodes will focus on the battle of Guadalcanal. It was there, relatively early in the long campaign to control of the island, that my uncle, Marine Sgt. Andy Malanowski, died a hero’s death.

Coming from a fairly reticent family, I never learned much about Andy, who was dead a decade before I was born. But some years ago I grew curious about Andy and his service and the circumstances of his death, and so I contacted the Marine Corps, which sent me a copy of his service record. I also published a notice in a Marine Corps Veterans’ newsletter, and a number of Andy’s comrades shared with me their recollections of him.

Anthony Peter Malanowski Jr. was born in Baltimore on January 31, 1914, the fourth of Rosalie and Anthony Malanowski’s ten sons (one ahead of my dad). Called Andy to distinguish him from his father, he grew up in a Polish neighborhood in East Baltimore near Patterson Park. He enlisted in the marines in July 1933. Obviously this was a Depression-era choice made by more than few 19 year olds, but perhaps unique in his family; although five of his brothers served in the armed forces, I believe Andy was the only one who enlisted during peace time.

Andy’s records show that he was a good marine, achieving high ratings on his evaluations. At various times during the 1930s he was stationed in San Diego, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, served two years as part of the marine detachment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and at least a year as part of the garrison in Peiping, China. (A marine who met him in 1940 would refer to Andy as “an old China hand,” even though this service occurred a scant two years earlier.) In 1940, his commander in Portsmouth recommended that Andy, by now a corporal, receive a Good Conduct Medal based on his long clean record. “Malanowski is an excellent man,’’ wrote H.L. Smith, “and is reenlisting.’’

H.L. Smith wasn’t the only person who had a positive view of Andy during this period. In 1934, Joseph Seborowski, who went on to have a distinguished career in the Marine Corps, was a ten year old neighbor of the Malanowski family on Chester Street . In a private memoir he shared with me, he remembers Andy returning home on leave:

“Small events are the origin of great world history. So it is with the life of a man. For Joe, there was a singular event during that enchanted summer of boyhood in 1934, which ordained him to his journey. He looked up one day from his boyish games, and saw striding toward him down Chester Street a rare Being of blue and gold and shining brass. A United States Marine.

Joe knew him. He was Anthony P. Malanowski Jr., who had become in the eyes of a ten year old boy, a god of battle. Maybe Joe was not entirely sure what marines did, but he resolved to someday wear that excellent uniform.’’

By the end of 1940, Andy had been promoted to platoon sergeant, and was transferred to the seventh regiment of the First Marine Division (1/7), which was commanded by the famous Maj. Chester `Chesty’ Puller. Andy spent 1941 and the first half of 1942 in Guantanemo Bay, Cuba, training for amphibious landings.

In a letter, Leland de Rocher of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who became Andy’s runner and tent-mate in March 1942, wrote “I can honestly say that my platoon sergeant was the finest man’s Marine I ever met during my four years in the Corps. I never heard him swear; he did not smoke or chew. He had one close friend, the company’s 1st Sgt. Ford. They had both served together in China. Sarge was always neat in appearance, setting a fine example for us all. The best I can recall is that he was a man 180 pounds, 5’8’’, barrel-chested with very strong arms and legs, and without any facial hair on his round face, and none on his head. He always wore a cap or helmet. His carriage was that of a military man. He was not inclined to talk unless there was a need to. While I am not sure, I think he went to mass when available.’’

De Rocher reports that the 1/7 left Cuba for Guadalcanal on Easter Sunday 1942. It was, he reports, “a great trip,’’ one that took them through the Panama Canal and eventually to British Samoa, where they spent three and a half months training. “We set up camp on the former British polo grounds,’’ wrote de Rocher. “ Pineapples and coconuts were plentiful and also fresh water to bathe in. We played baseball and were allowed two cans of beer a day. The friendly natives spoke fluent English and we got along well. They treated the marines to a luau when we were leaving the island.’’.

They were leaving for Guadalcanal, a 2,510-square mile island, about 90 miles long, part of the Solomon Island chain in the southwestern Pacific. The Japanese landed there in May 1942 and were constructing an airfield which would have served as a base for bombing Australia and Allied shipping. Elements of the First Marine Division landed in August and entered combat almost immediately. They captured the Japanese airfield, renamed it Henderson Field, and defended it against several furious Japanese counterattacks that resulted in high casualties on both sides. The 1/7 arrived on September 18 and saw action almost immediately. Before a week had passed, on September 23, de Rocher, standing next to Andy on a patrol, was shot in the hip by a Japanese sniper. The wound became infected, and he was sent home.

On September 27, the marines launched a three-pronged offensive operation near the mouth of the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal’s northern coast. One detachment of a regiment called Edson’s Rangers was supposed to land on the coast and move inland, and join up with another detachment of Edson’s Rangers that was already in position. Meanwhile, further east, near Point Cruz, elements of the 1/7, Andy among them, was supposed to land on the beach, move inland, and at the appropriate moment, join the two groups of Rangers in converging on a Japanese position that was supposedly lightly held by about 200 troops. But as Richard Wheeler writes in A Special Valor, his history of the marines in the Pacific, “the operation was a fiasco from beginning to end.’’

Essentially, both Ranger forces encountered heavy resistance, and neither was able to come close to meeting its objective. Meanwhile, the 500 men in the 1/7 moved up the hill from the beach, through a coconut grove, and into position on a grassy ridge, where they saw not 200 Japanese troops, but a large column advancing against them, and moving to encircle them and cut them off from the beach.

A desperate fight began. The 1/7’s commander was killed and his second-in-command wounded by a single mortar round. Radio communication was knocked out. Japanese soldiers assaulting the ridge came so close that the marines had to aim their mortars almost straight in the air so that the descending shells would hit their targets. With the radio useless, a signalman employed semaphore flags to communicate with Puller, who was offshore in navy ship called The Ballard. Puller immediately signaled the marines to fight their way back to the beach, and he had The Ballard use its big guns to clear the enemy from the path of retreat.

Chaos prevailed: noise and smoke from the exploding shells, the marines plunging headlong down the hill, the Japanese pursuing, other Japanese who had survived the bombardment jumping out of the jungle to ambush the marines. One Japanese officer leaped from the brush and beheaded a marine with his sword. Finally the marines reached a clearing near the beach, but with the enemy closing in, Andy took a Browning Automatic Rifle from a wounded marine and set it up behind a fallen log. “You take Doc Schuster and the other wounded on down,” he said to Captain Regan Fuller, “and I’ll handle the rear. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’’

Fuller says that when he and the others reached the beach, he heard a rapid burst of gunfire, and then silence.

In a letter, Donald Dillard of Fenton, Michigan said “I was the last marine to see your uncle at Point Cruz. He was slumped across a log. I rolled him over, took what was left of his ammo, and ran for it.’’

After more desperate combat on the beach, the marines were evacuated. Andy was one of 24 members of his unit who were killed that day; another 23 were wounded. With terrible fighting on both the island and the sea surrounding it, the battle for Guadalcanal lasted until February 1943, when the Japanese finally evacuated their forces. According to one source, 1500 Americans and 25,000 Japanese died on the island, and many more died at sea.

In Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller, Burke Davis writes the Puller recommended that Andy be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, and says that Andy received it. In A Special Valor, Richard Wheeler reports the same information. It is not clear what their source was. In the event, Andy was awarded The Navy Cross, the navy’s highest decoration. The citation accompanying the award, sent in a letter on December 8, 1942 by Admiral William F. Halsey, reads “For exceptional heroism in action against the enemy on September 27, 1942, near Point Cruz Guadalcanal. Sergeant Malanowski, with an automatic rifle, covered the withdrawal of his company until overrun and killed by the enemy. By his exhibition of the highest bravery, unselfish courage, and utter disregard for his own personal safety, he inflicted great loss on the enemy, greatly assisted in the withdrawal of his company, and gave his own life in the action.’’

“I was a young marine of 17 when your uncle led us,’’ wrote Louis Clabeaux of Redington Shores, Florida. “Your uncle saved the lives of our platoon.’’

Combat conditions prevented the immediate recovery of Andy’s body, and subsequent attempts to locate the body by the Graves Registration Company, including one as late as 1947, were unavailing. Donald Dillard rather trenchantly reminded me that the Japanese were known to mutilate the bodies of the enemy.

My father once told me that the military offered to put a marker in honor of Andy in Arlington National Cemetery, but that my grandmother declined, satisfied with the plaque that hangs in the vestibule of Holy Rosary Church on Chester Street that lists Andy’s name among the parishioners who had been killed in action. No matter; Andy’s real monument is the admiration of the men who knew him.