The Shroud Slips: Guadalcanal
The Marines’ approach to publicity differed from that of both Douglas MacArthur and Ernest King. While these two commanders sought to control the news agenda from afar, using their own communiqués to reveal only what they wanted the public to know, the Marines pioneered the concept of combat correspondents. Two of them landed on Guadalcanal in early August, where they worked with two civilian correspondents, Richard Tregaskis and Robert Miller. Initially, a combination of tenuous communications and overzealous censorship meant that these correspondents struggled to tell the story of Guadalcanal. But this began to change once the Marines’ position became more secure and, crucially, Tregaskis left the island to write up his famous diary of the campaign.