On board the Nautilus the task force commander, Commodore John Haines, would expect the raiders to return in their rubber dinghies no later than 2100hrs on D-Day, which would be 18 August. Providing everything went according to plan the Marines would then attack Little Makin, one and a half miles to the north-east, the following morning.
A little after 0300hrs on 16 August, the Nautilus was by Little Makin, and at first light the submarine submerged and moved closer to Makin to take a series of periscope photographs. That evening the two submarines rendezvoused and the men began to prepare for battle, relieved at the imminent escape from the claustrophobia of the submarine. At 0330hrs on 17 August the submarines surfaced and the raiders emerged to driving rain and a strong wind. Seeing the weather, Carlson scrapped the original plan of landing on two beaches and ordered his men to head for Beach Z.
Cautiously the Marines jumped into their 20 dinghies and proceeded towards the shore half a mile away, with 19 of the inflatables landing on a 200-yard stretch of beach. The dinghy containing Lieutenant Oscar Peatross and 11 men beached a mile to the south-west; showing the sort of initiative with which the Raiders had been instilled, Peatross sent two men off on separate trails to search for the main party and positioned the others in what, unbeknown to the officer at the time, was the Japanese rear.
Minutes after landing the Raiders’ hope of a surprise attack was dashed when one of their number accidentally discharged his weapon. The incident confused Carlson, already unsettled by the weather and the disappearance of Peatross, and he ordered A Company to launch an immediate attack on the Japanese garrison on the other side of the island – a role for which B Company had trained.
By 0630hrs Carlson’s force was ‘heavily engaged’ and already nine Raiders were dead. Throughout the morning machine-gun nests were painstakingly dealt with by the Americans but the well-concealed snipers hiding in coconut trees were harder to silence. Carlson ordered his men to bring their superior firepower to bear, which accounted for many but not all of the Japanese marksmen. ‘Snipers were cleverly camouflaged and their fire was extremely effective,’ wrote Carlson in his report on the raid.
The raid on Makin had turned into a battle, a combat situation for which Carlson was unprepared. Thrown by the ferocity of the Japanese resistance, even though he had learned of their aggression during his time in China, Carlson’s boldness dissipated and he ceded the initiative to the enemy, who grew in confidence in the face of American passivity. Instead of launching a flanking attack on the main Japanese force, Carlson positioned his men in a skirmish line so the fight, in the words of one Raider, resembled ‘a shootout at the OK Corral’.
Nonetheless there were acts of great individual courage from the Raiders, such as the lone charge by Corporal Daniel Gaston, in which he destroyed a machine-gun nest and killed five of the enemy before dying himself. Some of the Raiders’ finest non-commissioned officers were downed as they tried to wrest the initiative back from the Japanese. Sergeant Clyde Thomason fell to a sniper (he was subsequently awarded a Medal of Honor for his gallantry, the first such award in the war for a Marine serving in the Pacific) and Sergeant Norman Lenz was shot in the head and paralyzed by a sharpshooter’s bullet.
Twice the Japanese launched counter-attacks but both times they were repelled by the Raiders. Then at 1320hrs the Japanese air force arrived, the Makin wireless station having radioed for assistance. Twelve aircraft spent more than an hour strafing the island, causing few casualties but pinning down the Marines and giving much-needed succour to the Japanese. Two flying boats attempted to land in the lagoon and disgorge reinforcements but both were destroyed by the Raiders’ anti-tank weapons.
By now it was clear to some of the Raiders that the Japanese resistance was weakening. Dead littered the island and only sporadic sniper fire disturbed the afternoon tranquillity of the island. When Carlson questioned some of the locals on the strength of the Japanese garrison, estimates varied from 100 to 180. Carlson erred on the side of caution and believed the figure to be at the top end of the scale.
Carlson also inexplicably neglected to act when one of the two men sent by Lieutenant Peatross reached his command post at 1400hrs. Informed by the soldier that Peatross’s section was in the unoccupied south-west of the island, Carlson failed to order his officer to attack the Japanese rear. It was a decision that later baffled Peatross, who wrote in his post-war memoirs: ‘As he walked along the battle line and talked with the Raiders, saw with his own eyes the enemy dead strewn about the battlefield and heard with his own ears the marked diminution in the volume and variety of enemy fire until all that remained was intermittent sniper fire, Carlson should have realized long since that the prize was his for the taking. But he didn’t.’
As dusk approached, Carlson decided to withdraw from the island rather than complete the mission by destroying the radio stations and wiping out all Japanese personnel. Instead, at 1930hrs the men climbed into their dinghies and began paddling for the submarine lying offshore. Exiting the reef proved a challenge, as time and again heavy breakers capsized the already exhausted men. At least one man appeared to be taken by a shark. At nightfall only 80 of the 200 men had succeeded in reaching the submarines. The other 120, including Carlson and Roosevelt, were stranded on the beach, many without their weapons.
During the night Carlson and Roosevelt discussed many options, among them surrender, but at dawn on 18 August some of the Raiders tried again to leave the beach, and two dinghies made it to the submarines. On hearing that surrender was being discussed, Commodore Haines sent a rescue party to the beach composed of five volunteers, all of whom were strong swimmers.
Before they arrived, however, Carlson had recovered his poise and his fighting spirit and resolved to fulfil his mission. Sending out patrols to probe the enemy’s strength, he learned that the few Japanese who remained were dispersed over a wide area; emboldened by the intelligence, Carlson advanced across the island and destroyed what he could.
Carlson and his men finally made it off the island at 2300hrs on 18 August, and 53 minutes later the Nautilus and Argonaut set sail for Hawaii. Nineteen Raiders had been killed and several wounded during the raid, though it wasn’t until later that it was discovered nine men had been left behind – five of whom were the rescue party sent by Haines. Although the oversight was blamed in part on the fog of war, Carlson’s mistake further fuelled resentment among his detractors within the Marine Corps who in private considered it an act of gross negligence. The nine Marines were subsequently captured by the Japanese and after a few weeks in captivity were beheaded on 16 October, a Japanese holiday to honour departed heroes.
The fate of the missing nine men, however, was of little importance to the American press when the Raiders returned to Hawaii on 25 August. Despite the questionable success of the raid, Carlson and his men were acclaimed as heroes and afforded a military guard of honour at Pearl Harbor with Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief, US Pacific Fleet, greeting Carlson as he stepped on shore. A Marine press release was hastily sent to media organizations in which it was said the Raiders had ‘fought gangster fashion for 40 hours’ with the soldiers showing ‘they can give plenty of hot lead and cold steel to the Japs’.
Along with Sergeant Thomason’s posthumous Medal of Honor, the Navy awarded 23 Navy Crosses (second only to the Medal of Honor) to members of the raid including Carlson and James Roosevelt, to help convey the impression that the raid on Makin had been an unparalleled triumph and a severe setback to Japanese prestige. But in truth the raid achieved little, other than to battle-harden the men who took part. An insignificant number of Japanese soldiers had been killed and a few buildings destroyed, at a cost of 28 dead or missing Marines. It also deepened the dislike among a cadre of Marine officers for Carlson, as they watched in distaste as he revelled in the limelight upon his return from Makin.
Carlson, however, was brutally honest in his assessment of the raid, even admitting in his operational report that he had consider
ed surrender. Nimitz was astounded, and furious, when he read the report and demanded the passage concerning surrender be removed. When he himself analyzed the Makin Island operation, Nimitz criticized Carlson for failing to take the initiative in the early stages of the raid and he concluded that ‘the old story in war of the importance of the offensive was again demonstrated’.
What was never brought into the open in the analysis of the Makin raid was the extent to which the presence of James Roosevelt had inhibited Carlson’s decision-making. Though Roosevelt performed his duties admirably in difficult circumstances, some believed his presence on the island caused Carlson to act with unusual docility. The thought of the president’s son being shot by an enemy sniper must have weighed on Carlson’s mind at some level or other, and instead of showing characteristic Gung Ho! aggressiveness, the Raiders were hesitant and diffident in the face of a small, if determined, enemy.
Fortunately for Carlson, two months after the Makin raid Roosevelt was transferred to San Diego with instructions to raise what would be known as the 4th Raider Battalion (a 3rd Battalion was raised at the same time). By now, October 1942, the 2nd Raider Battalion was based on Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, 550 miles south-east of Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands in the south-west Pacific.
Guadalcanal was an island at the centre of a bitter struggle between Japan and the United States. Situated 1,400 miles east of Australia, the island – 92 miles long and 33 miles wide – was in the hands of the Japanese, and a major threat to the supply lines between the USA and Australia. If America wanted to win the war in the Pacific they would need to oust the enemy from Guadalcanal and seize the airstrip for themselves.
In August 1942 the Americans landed on Guadalcanal and in the face of fierce Japanese resistance established a small foothold in the north, centred around an airfield under construction called ‘Henderson Field’. But Japanese forces were in the dense jungle all around the Field and on top of the 1,515ft mountain overlooking the American positions, on which was located their artillery piece dubbed ‘Pistol Pete’ by the Americans.
Bitter as the fighting was on Guadalcanal, it offered Carlson and his men the perfect opportunity to re-establish their reputation after the confusion of the Makin raid. There they had been forced to fight like infantrymen, but in the jungles of Guadalcanal they could revert to being what they had trained to be: guerrilla fighters. On 22 October Carlson presented a plan to his superiors: landing on the unoccupied south side of the island, his Raiders would advance through the jungle and over the mountain and attack the Japanese from the rear. The idea was considered but rejected, and instead Carlson was ordered to land two companies at Aola Bay, 40 miles east of Henderson Field, and provide a defensive ring to allow another airfield to be constructed so that aircraft could land safely.
On 4 November, C and E companies landed at Aola Bay and almost immediately found their mission altered; instead of acting as defensive troops they were to carry out a reconnaissance patrol to gauge the strength of the Japanese between the bay and Henderson Field, and eliminate any of the estimated 1,500 Japanese still at large following an earlier offensive by the Marines and Army.
Carlson was delighted at the change of plan. Now at last he could put into practice all the guerrilla skills he had acquired since arriving in Nicaragua 12 years earlier. On 6 November Carlson led his patrol into the jungle. As well as the 266 men of C and E companies, he was accompanied by 150 native scouts, the latter finding the going easier in the dense jungle – in which they covered only five miles on the first day.
Over the next few days the Raiders struggled to acclimatize to the enervating heat, a terrain that was a daunting mix of volcanic hills, jungles, rivers and open fields of kunai grass interspersed with ramshackle villages and the prevalence of venomous reptiles and aggressive insects. Though there were wasps on Guadalcanal that were 3in long, it was the millions of mosquitoes that made life miserable for the Raiders, for with the mosquitoes came malaria – the most common affliction to strike down men on the island, after dysentery and ringworm.
The first major contact with the Japanese occurred on the morning of 11 November when they intercepted 700 enemy troops evading a large-scale American offensive to the north-west of the Raiders’ position. Throughout the day the Raiders fought a series of bloody engagements around Asamana, with Captain Richard Washburn’s E Company fighting off a far superior force and in the process killing 120 of the enemy. C Company, on the other hand, was in disarray by mid-afternoon and it required Carlson to leave his command post and take charge of the company. Having assessed the situation at first-hand, Carlson called in an air strike and, in the aftermath, the Japanese withdrew to the south, leaving behind 160 dead in total. Raider losses were ten dead and 13 killed. As a consequence of C Company’s performance, Carlson relieved its commanding officer – Captain Harold Throneson – of his duties.
The day after the battle at Asamana, the Raiders found one of their number staked out on the ground with his testicles cut off and stuffed in his mouth and dozens of other mutilations to his lifeless corpse. An enraged Carlson, adopting the Biblical exhortation of ‘an eye for an eye’, ordered the immediate execution of two Japanese prisoners and gave instructions that no mercy was to be offered to the enemy for the rest of the campaign.
On 12 November the Raiders began pressing west, following the trail of the Japanese survivors of Asamana who were trying to link up with the main army beyond Henderson Field. On 13 November Carlson and his men fought the Japanese in a series of short, sharp engagements that ended each time with the Americans drawing the enemy into the sights of their artillery. Satisfied that the Japanese had been cleared from the area around Asamana, Carlson established a new command post in the village and began probing further west and south.
At last Carlson was in his element, the leader of a band of guerrilla fighters operating in the perfect terrain for the warfare for which they had trained. In addition his fire-teams were proving their effectiveness in the almost daily contacts with the Japanese, overwhelming the enemy with their devastating concentrated firepower. Despite being twice as old as his Marines, the 46-year-old Carlson possessed limitless supplies of stamina that astounded his men, and he often insisted on walking with the lead scout in order to better assess the situation. ‘Colonel Carlson was a fearless, inspirational leader,’ recalled Captain Richard Washburn. ‘He seemed to have a sixth sense as to where the enemy was located and what he was going to do.’9
Occasionally the Raiders would encounter a solitary Japanese sniper, more often than not concealed in the vast roots of a banyan tree, but the real enemy on Guadalcanal was the environment itself. It was the rainy season and the men were constantly wet as they moved through the steamy jungle; clothes rotted, boots disintegrated and skin chafed until it was red-raw. Nearly all the men suffered from one disease or another with dysentery causing the most misery: some soldiers were so badly afflicted they cut a opening in the seat of their trousers so they could evacuate their bowels on the move.
At night they slept where they pitched camp, a poncho over their emaciated bodies, and a string attached to the foot of their nearest buddy so they could alert one another to any approaching Japanese soldier. Day after day they ate the same rations – rice and bacon, heated in their helmet – with a little chocolate to follow. Often it was impossible to build fires so the men ate it cold.
On 24 November, 18 days after embarking on the patrol, the 2nd Raider Battalion had achieved what they had set out to do. The 40-mile area south of Henderson Field had been cleared of the Japanese, relieving the pressure on the American foothold at Guadalcanal.
The next day, Carlson’s force was reinforced by the arrival of A Company, fresh and eager for the fray, and aghast at the sight of their comrades as they emerged from the interior of the island.
In the last few days of November Carlson established a new HQ close in the shadow of Mount Austen, and sent out patrols to search for ‘Pi
stol Pete’, the Japanese artillery piece that had been bombarding Henderson Field, as well as the main enemy supply trail that led up the mountain and down the other side towards the airfield. On 30 November, in the Lunga Valley, a section of Raiders discovered and destroyed ‘Pistol Pete’, together with a 37mm anti-tank gun. On the same day another section of Raiders consisting of seven men under the command of Corporal John Yancey ambushed 100 weary Japanese soldiers who had stopped for some lunch; without sustaining casualties themselves, the American patrol killed 75 of the enemy in the half-hour contact.
On 2 December Captain Peatross, one of the Raiders who had emerged from the Makin Island raid with his reputation intact, located the Japanese supply trail that skirted Mount Austen and branched out north-west towards the Matanikau River. Armed with the news, Carlson decided that rather than returning to Henderson Field as ordered, he would demand one final task from his men: to clear the summit of Mount Austen of Japanese.
By now all six Raider companies were on Guadalcanal. Carlson assembled them and explained that they had one final mission that would involve A, B and F companies, the three sections that had been on the island for the shortest amount of time. Having outlined the task, Carlson led his men in a rendition of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and then he led them up the mountain.
It took six hours to reach the summit of Mount Austen and as they neared the top the Raiders encountered the Japanese. A desperate two-hour firefight ensued, but Carlson, unlike at Makin Island, never lost the initiative and deployed his men in flank attacks that slowly wore down the Japanese resistance. At the end of the engagement the Raiders had killed 25 of the enemy, though they had lost Lieutenant Jack Miller, one of their most popular officers.
The Daring Dozen Page 10
