Cognac Awaits a WWII 1st MarDiv Vet

This is a story about an old man, an even older bottle of cognac, and memories made when the world trembled. It begins on a beach in the South Pacific, jumps to a newspaper editor's office in Atlanta and winds up in the dignified confines of a steak restaurant in San Francisco.

And, because this is a story, some facts have been lost --- others, perhaps, embellished? But we know this much:

On Aug. 7, 1942, thousands of Marines from the 1st Marine Division stormed a beach where Japanese troops dug in and dealt death to the invaders. It was a tattered island, a stand of sand and palms in the South Solomons called Guadalcanal. U.S. forces took it after six months of fighting, setting Japanese forces on the run for the first time in World War II.

From Guadalcanal, the Marines shoved across the Pacific. Peleliu, Cape Gloucester, Okinawa: the islands formed bloody steppingstones that led closer to the Empire of the Rising Sun.

The war was done, but not this story.

In 1946, Ralph McGill, editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, was so impressed with the 1st Marine Division's exploits that he set aside a century-old bottle of Etournaud. A Marine who served in World War I, McGill said the cognac would remain uncanted until only one 1st Division Marine who saw action in World War II was left --- "the last of the 1st," McGill called him. And then, he said, that old man would raise a toast to those with whom he had fought.

At the time, about 50,000 Marines remained from those Pacific battles. Today, that number is dwindling fast.

McGill dispatched the cognac to an Atlanta bank vault, where it emerged only when the 1st held reunions, and not always then. Details from that time are sketchy. Did the bottle remain in Atlanta after McGill's death in 1969? McGill's son, Ralph McGill Jr., said he isn't sure; his dad, he said, didn't say much about that old gift. "It's the kind of thing a father wouldn't talk a whole lot about with a young son who was impressionable," said the publisher's son, who lives in Atlanta.

In 1988, according to Marine Corps publications, the bottle headed to a museum at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. It remained there until August 2007, when officials at the Marines Memorial Club & Hotel said they'd be happy to keep the cognac. These days, it is under lock and key at the Leatherneck Steakhouse atop the 12-story building, a San Francisco landmark.

The cognac was bottled about 160 years ago, but is likely older than that, said Darrell Corti, president of Corti Brothers Grocery of Sacramento, Calif. Founded in 1947, the grocery is a renowned wine retailer whose inventory contains cognacs more than a century old. McGill's cognac, said Corti, is probably worth about $2,000.

"It might be worth more than that to the Marine Corps," he said.

That brings us to Lou Imfeld of Williamsburg, Va. At a 1st Marine Division reunion earlier this year, the retired lawyer looked around. The youngsters who'd jumped off landing craft and bounded up hills had turned into old men who needed canes and walkers. He'd been a terrified 20-year-old when he came ashore at Guadalcanal all those years ago. Now he was 86, looking at mortality again.

"There weren't many of us left" at that gathering, said Imfeld, who also fought at Peleliu.

Imfeld, who'd seen the cognac at other gatherings, asked himself: Who would get McGill's gift? And what of the bottle's earlier years, when it sat in a bank vault in Atlanta?

His inquiries led to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. McGill looms large in the newspaper's history. In 1959, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials hammering at racial segregation.

Did the newspaper have any articles about McGill's long-ago generosity? Imfeld asked.

Very little, it turns out. In 1985, columnist Celestine Sibley wrote a couple of articles about McGill, who died in 1969, and the club of men for whom an old bottle was a symbol of youth and honor. Archivists also found a photocopy of a photo taken a few years after the war, depicting McGill and three Marines eyeing the fancy bottle.

According to the 1st Marine Division Association, fewer than 2,000 Marines who took those islands and atolls 60-plus years ago are alive today.

Imfeld knows that time will fell that handful of Marines. And soon, perhaps, McGill's gift will be opened.

Until then, the bottle remains in San Francisco, waiting for someone to drink deep. Until that happens, this story is not done.