Some 80 years ago this month, a scratch force of Marines waded ashore on a little-known island in the Pacific, with their beloved '03s in hand, determined to stop the Rising Sun. 
 
Some eight months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, and long after Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines fell to the Japanese onslaught during World War II, the Allies in the Pacific moved to seize the initiative and launched the first Allied land offensive in the Theater as well as the first American amphibious assaults of the war. Between Aug. 7 and Aug. 9, 1942, some 11,000 men of the newly-formed 1st Marine Division landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Japanese-occupied Solomon Islands, a chain of islands far closer to Australia than to Tokyo. There, the Marines aimed to seize an airfield the Japanese were carving out of the jungle and use it for their own fighters and bombers.

However, while the Army in 1937 had opted to switch to the M1 Garand from the M1903 Springfield-- a bolt-action .30-06 adopted during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt-- the Marines were slower to move towards the semi-auto battle rifle. It was only in Feb. 1941, just ten months before Pearl Harbor, that Marine Gen. Alexander Vandegrift wrote that he considered the Garand reliable enough to arm his Marines. With that, it wasn't until after America was in the war that the Corps officially adopted the M1 Garand and later the M1 Carbine. 

This meant that the 1st Marines wading ashore at Guadalcanal, under Vandegrift himself, primarily carried the M1903. While a dated design, the dependable bolt gun was used to kick the Japanese off their shiny new airfield (which was promptly named Henderson Field after a fallen Marine aviator) and keep them off despite the best attempts of the Empire to push the Marines back into the sea over the course of the next six months.

M1903s were there for the final shots of the campaign as well. 

Ultimately, the 1st Marine Division was withdrawn from Guadalcanal around Christmas 1942 and sent to Australia to refit with new equipment and to replace losses. The replacement U.S. Army troops of the 25th Infantry Division and Americal Division as well as the 2nd Marine Division on Guadalcanal primarily carried M1 Garands and M-1 Carbines as their main infantry rifles. According to the D-Series table of equipment for a Marine division by 1943, each such organization would be issued 5,285 M-1 Carbines, 7,406 M-1 Garands, and only 456 M1903s, the latter typically reserved for use by snipers and rifle grenadiers. 

While most Marines would eventually carry M1 Carbines and M1 Garands on further operations in the Pacific, there were several "Old Breed" holdouts that would hang on to their trusted M1903s until the end of the war. As noted in the 3,200-page five-volume official History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, "Nostalgia for the reliable '03 was widespread, but the increased firepower of the M-1 would not be denied."

By the time the Guadalcanal campaign closed in February 1943, Japanese losses were listed as approximately 25,000 killed or missing in action or died of wounds and disease. Marine and Army casualties on shore included some 1,600 killed and almost 5,000 wounded along with 55 missing. As noted of the campaign by Vandegrift, "We struck at Guadalcanal to halt the advance of the Japanese. We did not know how strong he was, nor did we know his plans. We knew only that he was moving down the island chain and that he had to be stopped."

The counteroffensive would end in Sept. 1945 with the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor, where Marines stood ready just in case things turned rowdy. 

Today, the 1st Marine Division remembers Guadalcanal on every "Blue Diamond" shoulder patch. 

For more information on the Guadalcanal Campaign, see the 222-page book by Maj. John Zimmerman at the Marine Corps History portal as well as the landing pages for the Campaign at the National Museum of the U.S. Navy and the Naval History and Heritage Command. For the Army's involvement in the Campaign, head on over to the Center for Military History's book on the subject.