A 'miracle' saved Guadalcanal hero?

Richard Fernandez:

One of the actual models for the Hasboro action figure GI Joe was Marine Medal of Honor winner Mitchell Paige. Paige who passed away in 2003, held a hilltop on Guadalcanal against more than a company of Imperial Japanese soldiers by manning each of the four machine gun positions in turn after everyone else had been killed. Paige tells the story of that frenzied Medal of Honor night, as each position was overrun and he finally held the ring alone here. What is particularly interesting is that he held back part of the story as he remembered it for years, fearing that he would not be believed. Several Japanese were headed for one of the unattended machine guns as he raced for it. In the next few moments he would live and they would die. Yet he believes it was not totally due to his skill and bravery that he survived. The part of the story he held back was that something unseen on that hill helped him.

Galvanized by the threat, I ran for the gun. From the gully area, several Japanese guns spotted me and swiveled to rake me with enfilading fire. The snipers in the trees also tried to bring me down with grenades, and mortars burst all around me as I ran to that gun. One of the crawling enemy soldiers saw me coming and he jumped up to race me to the prize. I got there first and jumped into a hole behind the gun. The enemy soldier, less than 25 yards away, dropped to the ground and started to open up on me. I turned the gun on the enemy and immediately realized it was not loaded. I quickly scooped up a partially loaded belt lying on the ground and with fumbling fingers, started to load it. Suddenly a very strange feeling came over me. I tried desperately to reach forward to pull the bolt handle back to load the gun, but I felt as though I was in a vise. Even so, I was completely relaxed and felt as though I was sitting peacefully in a park. I could feel a warm sensation between my chin and my Adam’s apple. Then all of a sudden I fell forward over the gun, loaded the gun, and swung it at the enemy gunner, the precise moment he had fired his full thirty-round magazine at me and stopped firing. For days later I thought about the mystery and somehow I knew that the ‘Man Above’ also knew what had happened. I never wanted to relate this experience to anyone, as I did not want to ever have anyone question it.

Just this year Penguin Canada published a book by John Geiger called the Third Man Factor. Geiger, a Governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and Chairman of the Society’s Expeditions Committee was fascinated by references in survival literature to the sensation among men in extreme danger of an unseen presence, and decided to write a book about it....

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Some people who have achieved heroic status are able to show the grace under pressure that Hemingway defines as courage. Many of these heroes do not survive their moment of courage so we do not hear about their "third man" encounters. We can still appreciate their efforts in the fight for our survival. Mitchell Page was a Marine at the battle that became the turning point in the war in the Pacific. Guadalcanal was the first place their offensive failed, and because of Mitchell's success it lead to many more victories for the US.