On 31 July the entire Marine task force was placed under the command of Vice Admiral Frank J. Fletcher's Task Force 61. The division as a whole would fight in the Guadalcanal Campaign until relieved at 1400 on 9 December 1942 by Alexander Patch's Americal Division. This operation won the Division its first of three World War II Presidential Unit Citations (PUC). The battle would cost the division 650 killed in action, 1,278 wounded in action with a further 8,580 contracting malaria and 31 missing in action. Others were awarded for the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa.