Samuel B. Griffith
Samuel Blair Griffith II was a brigadier general in the United States Marine Corps, a decorated combat veteran, and a distinguished scholar of Chinese military history. Griffith is known for his translations of The Art of War by Sun Tzu and On Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Zedong, as well as his combat service. He fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II, suffered wounds, and became Executive Officer of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion. For his valor on the battlefield, Griffith earned the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Purple Heart. After his retirement, he earned a PhD in Chinese Military History from the University of Oxford in 1961.
His academic work is recognized for pioneering Western strategic studies and advancing the understanding of Chinese military thought, with his translations widely disseminated in the required and recommended reading lists of U.S. military staff colleges. His personal papers are regarded by the Marine Corps as valuable primary sources on the history of the branch, the Pacific War, and U.S.-China relations.
Griffith died on March 27, 1983, in Newport, Rhode Island.
Early life and education
Samuel Blair Griffith II was born on May 31, 1906, in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He spent most of his youth in a suburb of Pittsburgh, where his father was a senior executive officer with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. His family had a background in law, with his grandfather and great-grandfather being Harvard-educated lawyers. Initially destined for Harvard himself, Griffith became interested in a military career after meeting personnel from the U.S. Naval Academy.He attended public schools in Pittsburgh and preparatory schools in Pittsburgh and Ilchester, Maryland, before receiving an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1925. At the academy, he found mathematics to be his "bête noire" while showing aptitude for English, history, and languages. He played on the plebe soccer and lacrosse teams. Upon his graduation on June 6, 1929, with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Part of his motivation for joining the Marines was to avoid the mandatory two years at sea required of Navy ensigns, having fallen in love with a girl from Kentucky.
Military career
Pre-World War II Service
After a brief and unsuccessful attempt at flight training, Griffith attended The Basic School, a foundational training program for newly commissioned Marine Corps officers, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in June 1929. Finding his time there "an absolute waste of time," he nevertheless met his tactics instructor, Capt. Merritt A. Edson, under whom he would later serve in combat. He also married Belle Gordon Nelson from Hopkinsville, Kentucky.From March 1931 to January 1933, after finishing The Basic School, he was assigned to duty with the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua during the Second Nicaraguan Campaign. Griffith cited how, before being transferred from Quantico to Nicaragua, he managed to get his orders delayed by 10 months after his wife gave birth to his first child. In Nicaragua, Griffith participated in operations against nationalist rebels. With his penchant for languages, he attained sufficient proficiency in Spanish to read Mexican novels, poetry, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote in the original language. Griffith later reflected that many of the tactical lessons from Nicaragua, such as the value of roving or long-range combat patrols, could have been applied "very early" in Vietnam.
In July 1935, following his promotion to first lieutenant in November 1934, Griffith was posted to the American Embassy in Peiping as a language officer, where he spent three years studying Mandarin Chinese. For the first two years, he received no other official responsibilities aside from receiving six hours of daily Mandarin instruction. Griffith felt that he had first grasped Mandarin after 15 months of instruction. During his time there, he developed a deep appreciation for Chinese culture, citing the people—particularly their "capacity for happiness"—as the most enjoyable part of his experience.
In his final year, following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and after his promotion to the rank of Captain, he served as a military analyst for the naval attaché, where he observed both Japanese and Chinese forces. He particularly remembered the one-week trip he made to visit Japanese forces in the Shansi province as an observer, was briefed on Japanese operations in Japanese headquarters, and spoke to Chinese prisoners. He also recalled that Evans Carlson had been in China with the 8th Route Army close to where Griffith was stationed. Griffith expressed great admiration for Carlson.
Following his three-year tour as a language student in China, Griffith returned to the United States in July 1938 to attend the Marine Corps Junior Course at Quantico. Upon completion, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, participated in experimental boat landing exercises, and trained intensely. In April 1940, an opportunity to return to China as an assistant naval attaché in Chungking was abruptly canceled after Griffith gave a candid and pessimistic assessment of the Chinese Nationalist government's prospects to a senior admiral.
World War II
In late 1941, Griffith, along with Captain Wallace M. Greene Jr., was sent to the United Kingdom as a special naval observer to study the training and methods of the British Commandos. He and Greene were in Inveraray, Scotland, when they learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor.Upon returning to the U.S. in the spring of 1942 as a Major, he was requested by Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson to serve as his executive officer of the newly formed 1st Marine Raider Battalion. Carlson, as the newly appointed commanding officer of the 2nd Raider Battalion, asked that Griffith conduct classes for officers on commando training methods.
The Raiders were an elite unit created for commando-style operations with an organizational structure distinct from other units and the ability for unit command to select their own officers and enlisted personnel. After participating in the selection process for the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, Griffith concluded that "the concept of a selected group, in the end turned out probably unnecessary and undesirable. The Marine Corps simply couldn’t afford it; we were just taking the cream of too many outfits."
Influenced by Carlson's time with the Chinese 8th Route Army, Griffith embraced the Gung Ho ethos, which means "work together," and implemented Carlson's "fire team" concept and structure within the 1st Raider Battalion. Carlson's conception of the "fire team" consisted of dividing ten-man squads into three fire teams of three men each commanded by a squad leader. Griffith believed that squads living, training, and fighting as cohesive units improved morale, discipline, and tactical effectiveness. After the Guadalcanal campaign in 1943, Griffith reorganized the 1st Battalion along those lines.
Pacific Theater
The 1st Raider Battalion's first combat operation was the assault on Tulagi in the Solomon Islands on August 7, 1942, which was secured after two days of encountering little Japanese resistance. Griffith recalls being surprised by the tenacity of Japanese night attacks. The battalion was then moved to Guadalcanal. On September 12–14, the Raiders defended Henderson Field at the Battle of Edson's Ridge. Following Edson's promotion to lead the 5th Marines, Griffith took command of the Raider Battalion on September 22, 1942. Griffith was promoted to lieutenant colonel in August 1942.On September 27, during the Guadalcanal campaign and the intense fighting near the Matanikau River, Lt. Colonel Griffith was wounded while leading, as the only field officer, his greatly outnumbered and nearly surrounded battalion, according to his citation. For his "extreme heroism" in this action, he was awarded the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart. After a period of recovery in New Zealand, he underwent thermal bath treatments to regain use of his right arm before rejoining his unit.
Griffith noted the heavy toll that the fighting took on his body and unit. He recalls that he had lost about 25 pounds with everyone in his battalion returning from Guadalcanal "looking like hell."
In July 1943, during the New Georgia campaign, he led his battalion in the attack on an enemy shore battery at Enogai Point. The terrain in New Georgia was even more rugged than on Guadalcanal, with the Marines taking an entire day to cover a single mile. The operation was further complicated by navigational errors, even with local guides, along with the loss of radio communication when a tree fell on their high-power transmitters and two Marines. At one point, Griffith embarked on a two-man forward reconnaissance mission that ran into Japanese machine gunners. Two Marines went missing, and future war hero Harry Liversedge unexpectedly joined the patrol despite earlier stating he would not. Griffith later described the situation as the most terrifying he had ever experienced. Following an engagement at Enogai, the unit successfully captured intact Japanese medium-caliber gun batteries, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Griffith recalled that trail interdiction, also employed by U.S. forces in the Vietnam War to block enemy supply routes, was futile. If Japanese jungle trails were compromised, they would simply make a new trail.
Following the battalion's withdrawal from New Georgia to Guadalcanal in August, and the toll the battle had taken on Griffith's health, he was sent back to the United States in September after being out of the country for 18-months.
Return to the U.S.
Following his convalescence, Griffith returned to Quantico to the Candidates’ Class serving as the executive officer before becoming the commanding officer. He contributed major "shakeups" to training programs and became part of a Board that proposed the adoption of a fourteen-man "fire team" composed of three fire teams with four men each, in addition to a squad leader and corporal assistant squad leader.After this assignment at Quantico, Griffith became commanding officer of the 21st Marine Regiment in 1945, which he described as "ripped to shreds" after combat on Iwo Jima. Aside from reconstituting the regiment in Guam, Griffith was tasked with preparing for Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of Kyushu. At the time, Washington was also considering a plan for a landing on the coast of China south of the Yangtze. Griffith later reflected that the idea of connecting with the Nationalist armies to reach Japan through South China "was certainly a goofy idea Holy God."