Background
Alexander Vandegrift was born on March 13, 1887, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was the son of William Thomas Vandegrift, architect and builder, and Sarah Agnes Archer.
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Alexander Vandegrift was born on March 13, 1887, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was the son of William Thomas Vandegrift, architect and builder, and Sarah Agnes Archer.
A student at the University of Virginia from 1906 to 1908, Vandegrift entered the marine corps as a second lieutenant in 1909. During his first years in the corps, he attended Marine Officers' School at Parris Island, South Carolina, and then served at the navy yard in Portsmouth, North Hampshire.
General Vandegrift held an honorary degree of Doctor of Military Science from Pennsylvania Military College, and honorary degrees of Doctor of Law from Harvard, Colgate, Brown, Columbia, and Maryland Universities and John Marshall College.
Like numerous officers of his generation, Vandegrift spent many years in the Caribbean, where the marines functioned as a colonial constabulary. Between 1912 and 1914, he served in Cuba, Panama, and Nicaragua, gaining promotion to the first lieutenant in 1914. He was at Tampico and Vera Cruz that same year and in 1915 was assigned to Haiti to take part in operations against mercenaries and other irregulars (known as cacos) based in the mountainous areas. Vandegrift, who was promoted to captain in 1916, also served there with the Gendarmerie d'Haiti (1916 - 1918), which he helped to organize and train. In 1918, he was advanced in rank to major and expected to be sent to France, but the armistice was signed before he went overseas.
After a few months at the Norfolk Navy Yard, he requested a second tour with the Gendarmerie d'Haiti (1919 - 1923). Vandegrift then spent two years at Quantico, where he attended the Field Officers' Course. With marine operations in Central America and the Caribbean winding down by the end of the 1920's, Vandegrift began to gain broader experience that was instrumental to his own success in the marine corps.
From 1927 to 1929, he was in China, serving in Shanghai first as a battalion commander and then as operations and training officer in General Smedley Butler's brigade. Vandegrift was later stationed in Tientsin. Between 1929 and 1933, he was assigned to the Federal Co-ordinating Service, a newly established agency in Washington, D. C. , intended to prevent duplication in the acquisition of materials by the armed forces and other federal departments. Vandegrift was next stationed again at Quantico, where he served as assistant chief of staff of the East Coast Expeditionary Force (soon made part of the newly organized Fleet Marine Force) and assisted in preparing the first manual on amphibious doctrine. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1934, Vandegrift had another tour in China (1935 - 1937) and then spent four years in Washington, D. C. , first as military secretary to the commandant of the marine corps and then as his assistant when Vandegrift's promotion to brigadier general became effective in 1940.
Levelheaded and adept at both staff work and leadership in the field, Vandegrift was ordered to New River, North Carolina, in November of 1941 to take charge of training the newly organized First Marine Division. Four months later he was given command of the division, which despite its intensive training had a large number of inexperienced personnel. The exigencies of war had caused marine headquarters to raid the division for cadres for newly organized formations as well as a regiment for the defense of Samoa. Vandegrift himself received orders in May to ship out to Wellington, New Zealand, with his staff and his two remaining regiments, where he was to continue training for at least six months he was told.
However, plans were drastically altered when intelligence sources revealed late in June that Japanese personnel had landed on the ninety-mile-long island of Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons and had begun construction of an airfield. Knowledge about Japanese troop strength and dispositions on the island was scant, and adequate topographic maps were not available. His superiors, nevertheless, gave Vandegrift little more than a month to prepare to land on Guadalcanal and nearby Tulagi. He was assigned a mixed lot of marines in various stages of training and organization: the bulk of his First Division, a regiment that was still at San Diego, and two independent battalions.
On August 7, 1942, the landings were made. Tulagi was secured after a few days, while Vandegrift led two regiments and supporting troops in unopposed landings on Guadalcanal. On the next day, the marines took control of the uncompleted airfield, which they soon finished and named Henderson Field. Once the Japanese had had time to reinforce their troops already on Guadalcanal, they bitterly contested the Americans' foothold. Vandegrift had only enough personnel to establish a defensive perimeter around Henderson Field, control of which was essential for American retention of Guadalcanal and Tulagi, and to send out patrols. The inability of the United States Navy to control the seas around Guadalcanal during the first months of the campaign made the arrival of essential supplies and reinforcements uncertain.
At times, American personnel on Guadalcanal, struggling against both the Japanese and the debilitating climate and swamps, jungles, and sawgrass that covered large areas of the island, felt almost as forgotten as other Americans had on Bataan less than six months earlier. However, additional manpower, equipment, food, and ammunition got through just often enough for Vandegrift's men to repel determined Japanese assaults in the areas along the Matanikau and Tenaru Rivers and Edson's Ridge. Improvement in the Americans' situation came in November when more planes and aviation personnel and additional ground forces were made available. At last Vandegrift was able to start extending his lines.
In December, the First Marine Division was relieved of duty, and Vandegrift turned over command on the island to an army officer. Historians have debated the wisdom of launching a large and complex operation like the seizure of Tulagi and Guadalcanal with such meager forces, but assessments of Vandegrift's generalship on Guadalcanal have remained favorable. His conquest of Guadalcanal began a phase of operations in the South Pacific in which Allied forces began to advance. His tactics set important precedents for warfare in the region: seizing a beachhead, establishing a suitable defensive perimeter, and constructing or occupying an air base within the perimeter.
For several months in early 1943, Vandegrift remained with the First Division, based near Melbourne, Australia, as it refitted and trained for future operations. Due for a promotion to lieutenant general, Vandegrift was preparing to leave the Pacific for Washington, D. C. , where he would become commandant of the marine corps. However, complications developed in the South Pacific that led headquarters to postpone the change in command of the marine corps and temporarily assign Vandegrift command of the First Marine Amphibious Corps (which included the Third Marine Division, an army division, and supporting troops) as it prepared for the invasion of Bougainville. Major General Charles Barrett was slated to replace Vandegrift in time to complete preparations and command the invasion.
Vandegrift was actually en route home in October when Barrett's unexpected death caused him again to be given command of the First Marine Amphibious Corps. Once the beachhead on Bougainville was established and secured in early November, Vandegrift was relieved of his command so that he could finally return to Washington to become commandant, a position he held until his retirement at the end of 1947. The consensus was that had the Japanese had nuclear weapons, an operation of the sort that seized Iwo Jima in 1945 would have failed. The answer seemed to lie in perfecting helicopters for assault operations, what would later be called "vertical envelopment. "
Vandegrift died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
In 1945, Vandegrift became the first marine officer on active duty to hold four-star rank. In the years after 1945, Vandegrift set in motion two developments that were to be important to the future of the marines: saving the Fleet Marine Force with its divisional organization and attached air wings and reassessing amphibious doctrine in light of nuclear developments. In 1982, the frigate, USS Vandegrift (FFG-48) was named in his honor. The main street that runs through Camp Pendleton is named Vandegrift Blvd in his honor. A former military housing complex, now civilian housing, for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, has streets named for World War II commanders including Gen Vandegrift, Gen Eisenhower, Adm Nimitz and others.
Vandegrift married Mildred Ellis Strode of Amherst County, Virginia, on June 29, 1910. They had one child. After his wife's death in 1952, Vandegrift married Kathryn Hinson McDaniel of Charlottesville, Virginia. They had no children.
