Major General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., USMC, commanded the 6th Marine Division. Shepherd was 49, a native of Norfolk, Virginia, and a 1917 graduate of Virginia Military Institute. He served with great distinction with the 5th Marines in France in World War I, enduring three wounds and receiving the Navy Cross. Shepherd became one of those rare infantry officers to hold command at every possible echelon, from rifle platoon to division. Earlier in the Pacific War, he commanded the 9th Marines, served as Assistant Commander of the 1st Marine Division at Cape Gloucester, and commanded the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade at Guam. In September 1944 at Guadalcanal, he became the first commanding general of the newly formed 6th Marine Division and led it with great valor throughout Okinawa. After the war, he served as Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, during the first two years of the Korean War, and subsequently became 20th Commandant of the Corps. General Shepherd died in 1990.
MajGen Francis P. Mulcahy
Major General Francis P. Mulcahy, USMC, commanded both the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing and the Tenth Army Tactical Air Force (TAF). Mulcahy was 51, a native of Rochester, New York, and a graduate of Notre Dame University. He was commissioned in 1917 and attended naval flight school that same year. Like Roy Geiger, Mulcahy flew bombing missions in France during World War I. He became one of the Marine Corps pioneers of close air support to ground operations during the inter-war years of expeditionary campaigns in the Caribbean and Central America. At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mulcahy was serving as an observer with the British Western Desert Air Force in North Africa. He deployed to the Pacific in command of the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing. In the closing months of the Guadalcanal campaign, Mulcahy served with distinction in command of Allied Air Forces in the Solomons. He volunteered for the TAF assignment, deployed ashore early to the freshly captured airfields at Yontan and Kadena, and worked exhaustively to coordinate the combat deployment of his joint-service aviators against the kamikaze threat to the fleet and in support of the Tenth Army in its protracted inland campaign. For his heroic accomplishments in France in 1918, the Solomons in 1942–43, and at Okinawa, he received three Distinguished Service Medals. General Mulcahy died in 1973.
[Sidebar ([page 8]):]
Initial Infantry Commanders
Within III Amphibious Corps, the initial infantry commanders were those who led their troops ashore in the initial assault on Okinawa during Operation Iceberg. Eighty-two days of sustained combat exacted a heavy toll in casualties and debilitation. Among the battalion commanders, for example, four were killed, nine were wounded. Only those commanders indicated with an asterisk [*] retained their commands to the end of the battle.
1st Marine Division
1st Marines: Col Kenneth B. Chappell
1/1: LtCol James C. Murray, Jr.
2/1: LtCol James C. Magee, Jr.*
3/1: LtCol Stephen V. Sabol
5th Marines: Col John H. Griebel*
1/5: LtCol Charles W. Shelburne*
2/5: LtCol William E. Benedict
3/5: Maj John H. Gustafson
7th Marines: Col Edward W. Snedeker*
1/7: LtCol John J. Gormley*
2/7: LtCol Spencer S. Berger*
3/7: LtCol Edward H. Hurst
8th Marines: Col Clarence R. Wallace*
1/8: LtCol Richard W. Hayward*
2/8: LtCol Harry A. Waldorf*
3/8: LtCol Paul E. Wallace*
6th Marine Division