The 5 Most Lethal U.S. Marines of WW2-ZZ

27.That’s how many medals of honor were awarded for a single battle in 1945, the Battle of Ewima.

More than any other battle in World War II.

But of the 70,000 Marines who fought on those volcanic beaches and the thousands more who stormed the jungles of Guadal Canal, five men stand apart.

Not because they survived.

Three of them didn’t, but because of what they did before they fell.

Today, we’re ranking five legendary United States Marines of World War II based on their individual combat actions and the scale of enemy forces they engaged.

Number five directed artillery fire for 48 hours without sleep to dismantle an entire defensive sector.

Number four wielded a custom modified aircraft gun that screamed at twice the rate of standard weapons.

Number three held a critical position through the night as wave after wave of enemy soldiers attacked.

Number two operated multiple machine guns after his entire platoon fell.

And number one, he spent four hours crawling from pillbox to pillbox with a flamethrower while the entire island burned around him.

These rankings are based on documented actions, witness statements, and Medal of Honor citations.

The exact enemy casualties attributable to individual Marines are impossible to verify in the chaos of combat, but the scale and intensity of what these men faced and accomplished is undeniable.

Let’s count down five of the most remarkable individual combat actions by Marines in World War II.

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Now, let’s start with number five.

Number five, Captain Robert Hugo Dunlap.

Here’s what you need to understand about Eoima.

In February 1945, the Japanese had built 800 different fortified positions across an island that was only 2 and 12 miles wide and 5 m long, 18 kilometers of underground tunnels, reinforced concrete pill boxes with machine guns covering every inch of beach.

American intelligence said the battle would last one week.

It lasted 36 days and it cost more American lives per square mile than any battle in Marine Corps history.

Into this nightmare walked Captain Robert Dunlap, commanding officer of Company C, First Battalion, 26th Marines.

Dunlap was 5’6 in tall and weighed 148 lb.

He’d been a football player and trackman at Monmouth College in Illinois.

He’d already proven himself in the Solomons, rallying his platoon under fire on Bugenville.

Admiral William Holsey had personally given him a letter of commendation, but nothing in his past had prepared him for Ewima.

On February 20th, his company faced something that shouldn’t have been survivable.

They were advancing from low ground uphill toward steep cliffs where Japanese defenders had built an impenetrable network of caves and pillboxes.

Every other officer would have called for air support, called for tanks, waited for someone else to solve the problem.

Dunlap crawled forward alone, 200 yd ahead of his own lines through terrain covered by enemy fire.

He stopped at the base of a cliff 50 yards from Japanese positions.

Close enough to hear them breathing.

Close enough to pinpoint exactly where every gun was hidden.

Then he crawled back.

And for the next two days and two nights, without sleep, without rest, Dunlap directed artillery fire and naval bombardment against those positions with surgical precision.

He stood in exposed vantage points to correct the aim.

Shells landed around him constantly, but he refused to move until the job was done.

Of the nearly 300 men Dunlap led onto Ewima, fewer than half survived the first four days.

But his actions systematically dismantled one of the most heavily fortified Japanese positions on the entire island, allowing his company to advance when every other route was blocked.

On February 26th, a bullet finally caught him in the left hip.

He spent 14 months in hospitals, much of it in a full body cast.

When Paramount Pictures reached out after the war with John Wayne attached to the project, offering to buy the film rights to Dunlap’s story, he said no.

He thought Hollywood would make it look heroic.

Dunlap knew there was nothing heroic about it, just mathematics.

Someone had to crawl forward.

Someone had to stand in the open while shells fell.

He just happened to be the one who did it.

Number four, Corporal Tony Stein.

Most Marines went to war with standardisssue weapons.

Tony Stein didn’t build the Stinger alone.

Marine armorer Sergeant Mel Grevich led the modification effort, salvaging 30 caliber A&M2 aircraft machine guns from wrecked Douglas Dauntless dive bombers.

Only six were ever made.

But Stein, a former tool and die maker from Dayton, Ohio, the son of Germanspeaking immigrants from Yugoslavia, who had fled rising prejudice in central Europe, who had worked in a machine shop at Patterson Field and understood metal the way most people understand language, became its most devastating operator.

The finished weapon could fire between 1,200 and,500 rounds per minute.

Standard infantry weapons fired maybe 500.

Stein called it the stinger.

On February 19th, 1945, the first wave of Marines hit the beaches of Ewoima.

Men were dying by the dozen, pinned down with nowhere to go.

Tony Stein was one of the first men from his unit to get into a fighting position.

And then he did something that every Marine who witnessed it would remember for the rest of their lives.

He stood up in full view of the enemy, deliberately drawing fire to himself so he could identify where the Japanese guns were hidden.

Once he had their positions, he attacked one pillbox at a time.

The stinger screamed at rates that didn’t sound like any weapon the Japanese had ever heard.

Enemy soldiers fell to Stein’s devastating fire in that first assault, though exact numbers were never documented in the chaos of the beach landing.

But the Stinger burned through ammunition fast, so Stein kicked off his shoes to run faster, threw down his helmet to reduce weight, and sprinted back to the beach.

He grabbed ammunition.

Then he grabbed a wounded Marine, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him back to the aid station before returning to the fight.

He did this eight times, eight separate trips through enemy fire, each time returning with ammunition and leaving with a wounded brother.

His weapon was shot out of his hands twice.

He picked it up and kept firing.

Tony Stein was wounded during the assault on Mount Surabbachi and evacuated to a hospital ship.

When he heard his regiment was taking heavy casualties at Hill 362A, he left the hospital without authorization and returned to his unit.

On March 1st, 1945, 10 days after his Medal of Honor action, a Japanese sniper found him.

He was 23 years old, the only Jewish Medal of Honor recipient from Ewima.

His customuilt weapon was lost on the battlefield, but its legend survived him.

Number three, Sergeant John Basselone.

Here’s what you need to understand about the night of October 24th, 1942.

The jungles of Guadal Canal.

Sergeant John Baselone, known as Manila John because he’d served in the Philippines before the war, commanded two sections of heavy machine guns for the first battalion, seventh Marines, 16 men total.

Their mission was to hold a narrow pass near the Lunga River and defend Henderson Field, the airirstrip that was the entire strategic objective of the Guadal Canal campaign.

If Henderson Field fell, the Japanese would control the skies over the Solomon Islands.

At 2:00 in the morning, 3,000 Japanese soldiers attacked the Sendai Division.

Elite troops.

Their orders were simple.

Overwhelm the thin marine lines with sheer numbers.

Kill everyone.

Take the airfield.

One of Basselon’s machine gun sections was destroyed within hours.

Only two men could still fight.

Baselone didn’t retreat.

He moved an extra gun into position and kept firing.

When another gun jammed, he repaired it under fire and manned it himself.

His hands were burning.

The machine gun barrels were blistering his skin.

He didn’t stop.

When ammunition ran critically low, Basilone had a choice.

stay and run dry or fight through enemy territory to get more.

He chose the second option.

Carrying roughly 90 pounds of ammunition and weapons, Basilone fought through 150 yards of Japanese-held ground.

When the last Japanese assault came shortly before dawn, Basilone had no ammunition left.

He drew his pistol in one hand and his machete in the other and held his position until reinforcements arrived.

When morning came, 38 enemy bodies were counted in front of Baselon’s gun positions.

Many more had been killed throughout the defensive perimeter his sections held.

But those 38 became forever linked to Manila John.

One man leading two machine gun sections through 10 hours of hell.

John Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor, the first enlisted Marine to receive it in World War II.

The Corps sent him home on war bond tours.

He hated it.

He begged to return to combat, and finally the core relented.

On February 19th, 1945, Gunnery Sergeant John Baselon landed on the beaches of Ewoima.

When his unit was pinned down by a Japanese blockhouse, Basilone attacked it alone with grenades and demolition charges.

He destroyed it.

When a marine tank got trapped in a minefield under intense fire, Basilone walked through the explosions and guided the vehicle to safety.

Then a Japanese mortar round found him.

He was 28 years old.

He remains the only enlisted Marine in World War II to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross.

Every year, his hometown of Raritan, New Jersey, hosts the largest military parade in the nation in his honor.

Number two, Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Page.

Stop and understand what happened on the night of October 26, 1942.

Because what Mitchell Page did that night pushed the limits of human endurance.

Same campaign, same island, same desperate defense of Henderson Field.

But two days after Baselon’s legendary stand, the Japanese attacked again.

And this time they hit Mitchell Pa’s position.

Paige had enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 18, hitchhiking 200 miles to the nearest recruiting station because he couldn’t wait to serve.

He’d served in the Philippines.

He’d served in China.

He’d played baseball for the AllNavy Marine Team, a pitcher with a deadly accurate arm.

Now he commanded a machine gun platoon of 33 men defending a ridge overlooking a jungle ravine south of the airfield.

Before the attack came, Paige crawled forward and rigged a trip wire using C-ration cans and empty cartridges.

If the Japanese approached, the cans would rattle.

At 3:00 in the morning, they rattled.

Japanese forces were charging the ridge in waves.

The first wave broke against marine fire, but during the second wave, hand-to-hand fighting erupted.

A Japanese soldier thrust a bayonet at Paige’s head.

He blocked it with his hand, the blade slicing deep into his palm.

Paige drove his KBAR knife into the attacker’s throat.

Around him, his machine gunners were falling.

By the time the third wave attacked, Mitchell Paige was alone.

Every one of his 33 men was either dead or wounded.

Four machine guns, no crews, enemy forces still advancing.

Here’s what Mitchell Page did next.

He moved from gun to gun, firing each one, keeping the defensive position active.

The Japanese couldn’t understand why the fire wasn’t stopping.

When reinforcements finally arrived, Paige wasn’t done.

He grabbed his Browning machine gun, lifted it from its tripod, and carried it forward.

He threw ammunition belts over his shoulders.

Then he turned to the Marines behind him and shouted six words that would become legend.

Fix bayonets and follow me.

Mitchell Page led a counterattack down the hill.

The Japanese assault collapsed.

When the sun rose, Mitchell Page still held his ridge.

10 hours of continuous combat.

33 men down.

The position held.

He rose to the rank of colonel and died in 2003 at age 85.

The last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the ground battles on Guadal Canal.

Number one, Corporal Hershel Woody Williams.

On February 23rd, 1945, six Marines raised an American flag on the summit of Mount Surabbachi.

Joe Rosenthal captured the moment on camera.

That photograph became the most famous image of World War II.

It won the Pulitzer Prize.

It became the basis for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

But 1,000 yards away from that flag raising, a 21-year-old corporal from West Virginia, was doing something equally significant.

He just didn’t have a photographer watching.

Here’s what made Ewima different from every other Pacific battle.

The Japanese commander, General Tadamichi Kuri Bayashi, had completely changed the defensive strategy.

On previous islands, the Japanese tried to kill Americans in the water before they could land.

Kuribayashi reversed that.

He let them land.

Then he trapped them.

He built 800 fortified positions across the island, pillboxes of reinforced concrete that laughed at artillery shells, machine guns with interlocking fields of fire, and 11 mi of underground tunnels connecting everything.

When the Marines hit the beach, they sank into volcanic ash up to their ankles.

American tanks tried to push inland.

They couldn’t.

The pill boxes were too strong.

The company commander asked for a volunteer, someone willing to take a flamethrower and attack those pill boxes at close range.

Corporal Hershel Woody Williams stepped forward.

He was 5′ 6 in tall.

He’d been rejected by the Marine Corps initially because he didn’t meet the height requirement.

The flamethrower he strapped to his back weighed 70 lb and held enough fuel for 72 seconds of continuous fire.

He would need six of them before the day was over.

Covered by only four riflemen, Williams crawled toward the first pillbox.

Bullets ricocheted off his fuel tanks.

He reached the pillbox, shoved the nozzle through an opening, and pulled the trigger.

The pressurized stream of burning fuel filled the enclosed space.

The Japanese inside died instantly.

Williams crawled back, grabbed a fresh flamethrower, and did it again.

For four straight hours, Woody Williams attacked Japanese pill boxes, one at a time.

On one occasion, he climbed onto a pillbox, found an air vent, and shoved the nozzle directly into the hole.

On another, Japanese riflemen charged him with bayonets.

He turned the flamethrower on them.

Seven pill boxes, four hours, one man.

His Medal of Honor nomination was extensively documented with multiple witness statements, but Williams couldn’t remember most of it.

Your adrenaline is running so high, he explained.

You make no effort to remember.

After the war, Williams struggled with what we now call PTSD.

In 1962, a religious awakening finally ended the nightmares.

He spent the rest of his life serving veterans, creating the Woody Williams Foundation to support Gold Star families.

The Navy named a ship after him.

A VA hospital bears his name.

Hershel Woody Williams died on June 29th, 2022 at age 98.

He was the last living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II.

Let’s review what these five Marines accomplished.

Tony Stein wielded a custom modified aircraft gun through eight separate trips across a bulletswept beach, carrying wounded Marines to safety each time.

Robert Dunlap directed precision fire that dismantled a fortified Japanese defensive sector over 48 continuous hours without sleep, crawling within 50 yards of enemy positions to spot targets.

John Baselone led two machine gun sections through 10 hours of desperate fighting on Guadal Canal, then returned to Eoima where he died destroying a block house and saving a trapped tank.

Mitchell Page held a critical ridge alone after his entire platoon fell, moving between multiple machine guns to maintain defensive fire until reinforcements arrived.

Woody Williams destroyed seven fortified pillboxes with a flamethrower over 4 hours of continuous close quarters combat.

These five Marines faced overwhelming enemy forces in engagements lasting hours or days.

They did it not because they were superhuman.

They did it because they refused to stop.

Baselone with burned hands still gripping his machine.

Gun.

Paige with a bayonet wound in his hand still holding his position.

Stein running barefoot through enemy fire because shoes were slowing him down.

Williams crawling toward machine gun nests because moving forward was the only option.

Dunlap standing exposed to enemy fire because accurate targeting required it.

Individual Marines when pushed to the breaking point found a way to hold.

But here’s the real question.

Did we get the ranking right? Should Basselone rank higher for holding Henderson Field? Should Paige be number one for his solo defense? Should Williams move down because he had four riflemen covering him? Drop a comment right now and tell us your ranking.

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These Marines deserve to be remembered for what they actually did, not what Hollywood turned them into.

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