General Clarence Martin
Details On The Artifact
From the estate sale of General Martin his four pocket service coat named to the general and dated 1942 along with his service visor and major general flag.
A Bit Of History About General Clarence Martin
The battle for Buna in New Guinea was becoming to General Douglas MacArthur a problem. Sensing that the battle had stalled he installed a new commander General Robert Eichelberger. MacArthur order his new commander to basically “Take Buna or don’t come back alive”. Buna was a Japanese stronghold where the enemy used the topography to their extreme advantage by placing the Allies where they wanted so that the Japanese commanders could move troops easily to inflect maximum damage to the American and Australian solider. On an inspection tour to the Buna front Eichelberger found that his frontline troops were suffering from malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, or covered with jungle ulcers. Conditions were so bad that Eichelberger ordered the temperatures be taken of an entire company to which everyone in the company had a fever. Not only were the men sick but in Eichelberger’s opinion leadership was lacking. One man also suffering from malaria was Clarence Martin. Eichelberger on December 3rd would place Martin in command of one of the two task forces tasked with correcting the moral/sickness problems of the American units and then take Buna. It is noted on the web site history.army.mil that by December 14th the early phases of battle for Buna were accomplished and that the situation was improved to a marked degree.
Eichelberger had so much confidence in General Clarence Martin that he went on to placed him in command of the 31st Infantry Division for the upcoming Parang operation. Eichelberger in his book OUR JUGLE ROAD TO TOKYO wrote “I had selected the 31st (for the upcoming operation) because I had absolute faith in the fighting qualities of Clarence Martin now its commander. At Buna I had seen him, a staff officer, take command of a combat area and bring it to life. I watched him “walk out” his own high temperature malaria, the only time I have seen that done. If Martin had the 31st-that was the outfit for me.