One of the first land battles in the Pacific was on the banks of Alligator Creek on Guadalcanal by the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment. Protecting Henderson Field, the 2nd Battalion waited on the west bank with Private Leo John Carvalis, Jr., Pensacola High School Class of 1940, among them. Their enemy opponent was Colonel Kiyono Ichiki who was told that the Marines had been abandoned by their naval forces and were now critically low on food and ammo. The Japanese commander was a hardened veteran who welcomed the opportunity to attack and annihilate the demoralized, cowardly and helpless Marines.
So at 1:30 AM on August 21, 1942, a green flare arose into the sky from the jungles on the east bank as the screaming Japanese soldiers charged across the shallow creek. Private Carvalis and his fellow Marines of Company “G” took the brunt of the initial attack as the enemy troops slammed into their position. The fight quickly devolved into hand to hand combat with the Marines pulling out their K-Bar knives or blasted the enemy at point blank range. Carvalis was part of a four man “firing team” dug in close to the river and all of them were killed in the initial attack. With machine gun fire pouring into their ranks and the Marines refusing to give an inch the enemy attack began to falter. The enraged Marines counterattacked and drove them back across the creek leaving enemy bodies all along the way. The memory of Pearl Harbor was still fresh on their minds, so mercy was scarcely a consideration at the time!
By nightfall, over 800 of the original 900 Japanese soldiers in the attack were dead. Colonel Ichiki survived the battle, but could not survive his ego at having been defeated by the “cowardly and inferior” Marines. His ego was so large and his contempt for the spineless Marines so great that he had written in his diary for the next day “Enjoying the fruits of victory.” Now his “loss of face” required him to commit suicide while the remnants of his force were hounded into oblivion and slaughtered. The battle was mistakenly called the “Battle of the Ilu River” or the “Battle of the Tenaru River” although it was fought on Alligator Creek.
After the battle the bodies of Carvalis and his buddies were loaded inside their rain ponchos and carried to the beach where a temporary cemetery had been constructed. At the end of the war they moved to the National Cemetery at Honolulu, Hawaii where his heroic remains rests today. Leo’s brother, William Carvalis enlisted in the US Marines and became a hero in the Battle of Saipan in 1944.
Leo John Carvalis Jr., Pensacola
High School, Class of 1940
Site of the Battle of Alligator Creek, Guadalcanal
Grave site of Pvt. Leo John Carvalis Jr., Honolulu, Hawaii
William Carvalis, USMC, brother of Leo Carvalis Jr.