by Mark Moyar
The liberators found 511 American prisoners. They were unable to locate the camp’s lone British prisoner, Edwin Rose, an absent-minded fellow of sixty-five years who had been in the latrine during the raid and had apparently fallen asleep in spite of all the gunfire. The Rangers rushed to evacuate the prisoners, carrying the sickly and malnourished back across the rice fields and through the elephant grass to a squadron of wooden carts. The able-bodied loaded the infirm into the carts, which were then pulled by water buffalo toward the American lines. The 6th Ranger Battalion emptied the camp in just half an hour and escaped its smoking carcass before any Japanese reinforcements could arrive.
THE RANGERS AND Forcemen came into existence because of support at very high levels of the US government, but not at the highest level. The lack of presidential paternity was one of the principal differences between these forces and the other American special operations forces of World War II. General George Marshall, the Army’s chief of staff and the most influential American military officer of the war, formed these units primarily as means of bolstering partnerships with key allies. The merits of such forces on the field of battle were of much less concern at the time of their creation.
The Rangers and Forcemen were recruited and trained for missions that required exceptional degrees of fitness or skill, and in several cases these attributes enabled them to accomplish tasks that were beyond the capabilities of average Army units. At Monte la Difensa and Pointe du Hoc, where the special operations forces had to surmount extreme terrain obstacles, ordinary units likely would have come up short. At the Algerian port of Arzew, where the need to minimize destruction and bloodshed demanded stealth and cunning, the Rangers succeeded where others might well have failed.
Opportunities to exploit the superior capabilities of these units, however, proved to be few. Sneaking up on enemy forces or scaling mountains often yielded success against the Vichy French and the Italians, but such feats were much more difficult to pull off, and much less consequential, against large concentrations of German troops. Contrary to the visions of men like Winston Churchill and Geoffrey Pyke, Hitler’s Reich was not to be defeated through raids on the periphery. Its dominions had to be invaded in overwhelming strength and its conventional units worn down in bloody contests of attrition, a task for which elite forces were not much better suited than regular forces, and for which they were nonetheless routinely employed for lack of alternative missions. Under these conditions, concentrating officers in elite units sucked talent away from units that needed talent just as much, and exposed talent to concentrated slaughter, as occurred most spectacularly at Cisterna.
The Rangers and Forcemen often antagonized conventional military forces by touting their elite status or by acting as if they were above the law. Disregard for regulations and standard operating procedures, which could give the special units decided advantages on the battlefield, rankled others in the military, especially those individuals who saw meticulous shoe shining and unquestioning adherence to rules as the chief marks of a good military man. One official Army historian observed that Ranger indulgence in rowdiness, barroom brawling, and hectoring of military policemen “tended to confirm the suspicion of those line troops who were more than ready to view the Rangers as prima donnas and hooligans.”
For the Forcemen, the adventures and hardships of World War II were confined to the mainland of Italy. The Rangers cast a much broader shadow, fighting in Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, France, Germany, and the Pacific islands. The Rangers took part in all the major campaigns of North Africa and Europe, but they were latecomers to the Pacific, Cabanatuan being something of a swansong for special operations in the Pacific Theater. That swansong had little in common with the songs that had been sung before it in the war between the United States and Japan. An entirely different set of forces, belonging to the US Navy and Marine Corps, accounted for nearly all of the special operations in the Pacific. The island warfare of the Pacific Theater presented challenges much different from those encountered in the great land campaigns of North Africa and Europe, and hence special operations took on a different character. Many of the lessons learned by the Navy and Marine units would nevertheless bear remarkable similarity to those learned by the Rangers and Forcemen.
CHAPTER 2
RAIDERS AND FROGMEN
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Americans put aside political, regional, and personal differences to unite in the cause of national defense, their spirit of solidarity knowing no rival in US history. At the recruiting offices of the armed forces, the nation’s plowmen, stevedores, investment bankers, and professional athletes waited in line for hours to volunteer for service. American families grew fruits and vegetables in backyard Victory Gardens so that more food could be shipped to troops overseas, and they purchased war bonds to fund the production of battleships, tanks, and aircraft.
The groundswell of patriotic fervor did not, however, banish all petty rivalries, and nowhere was this more true than in the one place where one might have most expected to find unity, the leadership of the armed forces. On the critical question of who would run the war in the Pacific Theater, the Army recommended the appointment of General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US Army forces in the Far East. The Navy objected strenuously to MacArthur, lobbying instead for Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the US Pacific Fleet. Both sides tried to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt that they were in the right, and neither was willing to compromise.
In the end, Roosevelt settled on a solution that appeased both services, albeit in a manner that did injury to the principal of unity of command and ensured future friction and disputation. The president split the Pacific into two regions: the South West Pacific, under the command of MacArthur, and the Pacific Ocean Areas, under Nimitz. Most of the Army units in the Pacific Theater went into MacArthur’s region, while the Navy and the Marine Corps were concentrated in Nimitz’s area of responsibility. The development of Navy and Marine special operations forces, therefore, would take place under the aegis of Admiral Nimitz.
The US Marine Corps, like the US Army, was to develop special operations forces based on the model of the British Commandos. These Marine units, like the Army Rangers, would be attended by unforeseen changes in environment and purpose, and hence by profuse allegations of waste and inefficiency. The Navy would beget a very different type of special operations force, one addressed more directly to immediate operational needs, and hence less at the mercy of the vagaries of war.
THE PUSH FOR Marine Corps special operations forces originated with Captain James Roosevelt. The eldest son of the president, Captain Roosevelt had at first been vaulted to the rank of lieutenant colonel by his father, but he had chosen to take a reduction in rank and undergo standard Marine Corps officer training. He owed his interest in commando operations and guerrilla warfare to a mentor in the Marine Corps, Major Evans Carlson, who had witnessed Mao Zedong’s guerrillas firsthand while serving in China during the 1930s. Enamored of Mao’s forces, Carlson advocated replication of not only their guerrilla tactics, but also their ideological indoctrination.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the younger Roosevelt expressed his thoughts on special operations forces in a letter to the Marine Corps commandant, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, under the heading, “Development within the Marine Corps of a Unit for Purposes Similar to the British Commandos and the Chinese Guerrillas.” Drawing upon Carlson’s theories, the president’s son recommended employment of this special unit in the Pacific islands against the Japanese. General Holcomb replied to Captain Roosevelt with the politeness that a letter from presidential progeny demanded, but he did not refrain from criticizing the letter’s contents. He took particular issue with the proposed creation of a specialized “Commando” unit within the Marine Corps. “The term ‘Marine’ is sufficient to indicate a man ready for any duty at any time,” Holcomb wrote. “The injection of a special name, such as ‘Commando,’ would be undesirable and superfluous.” Holcomb and other
senior Marine Corps leaders were of the view that Marine Corps infantry battalions could do everything British Commando battalions could do. In their estimation, the Marines were already elite forces, and they worried that forming an elite within the elite would merely concentrate resources disproportionately in a few units and antagonize the rest.
To Holcomb’s dismay, President Roosevelt found the arguments of Captain Roosevelt more persuasive than those of the senior officer of the Marine Corps. Holcomb had no choice but to comply when Admiral Nimitz asked the Marines to form two commando-type battalions in January 1942. Merritt Edson was selected to command the 1st Raider Battalion, and Evans Carlson to command the 2nd. Carlson made Captain Roosevelt his executive officer.
As Holcomb had forewarned, the Raiders quickly made enemies among the rest of the Marine Corps. In a service that prized humility, the Raiders unabashedly advertised themselves as a cut above everyone else. Some Raiders even referred to themselves as “Supermarines.” Granted permission to recruit whomever they pleased, the Raiders conducted their first raids on the human resources of other Marine units, infuriating commanders who watched their best Marines depart.
Raider training, like Ranger training, was patterned after that of the British Commandos. In anticipation of strenuous raiding and campaigning, it emphasized hiking and fast marching. Trainees spent long hours in the water, day and night, to practice amphibious landings. Raiders also received extensive instruction in the use of weapons, with particular attention to the employment of knives and bayonets.
Carlson’s 2nd Raider Battalion launched its first raid in August 1942. Its target, the Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, had more psychological than military value. Ransacking the lightly defended atoll would give the Americans a morale-boosting victory. It would also divert Japanese attention from areas of the Pacific where the United States had greater ambitions.
Departing from Pearl Harbor on August 8, a total of 222 Raiders traveled aboard the submarines USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus. Space was extremely tight, with Raiders crammed into bunks stacked four high and twelve inches apart. Enclosed in stale air with nowhere to bathe, the men spent most of the ten-day voyage sweltering like overdone sausages in a hot kitchen.
The Raiders were therefore surprisingly cheerful when they learned that they would be disembarking from the submarines in a torrential rain. Neither the twenty-foot swells that rocked their rubber boats during the nighttime boarding nor the fouling of boat engines by splashing saltwater during fueling could stem the excitement. Once the boats had parted ways with the submarines, Raiders in the foul-engined boats paddled their way to Makin’s shore.
Scampering onto an empty beach with only the moon offering any light through the dark rain, the Raiders sought out landmarks they had seen on maps or aerial photographs. They whispered directions to one another as they felt their way toward their preplanned attack positions. Wilfred S. Le Francois, a forty-one-year-old lieutenant who had worked his way up through the enlisted ranks, recounted, “Once in a while, the fellows guiding me whispered a wisecrack, and it aggravated me to think they were thoroughly enjoying this adventure, which could easily mean our complete annihilation.”
The element of surprise was lost when Private First Class Vern Mitchell accidentally fired his rifle. At the sound, Carlson cursed for what was reported to be the only time in his career. Japanese soldiers jumped out of bed, the machine-gun crewmen moving into camouflaged nests while snipers climbed into coconut trees. Japanese officers lined riflemen up for a bayonet charge.
Catching sight of approaching Japanese riflemen, the Raiders let the enemy draw near and then swept their automatic weapons back and forth, until everyone in the Japanese line had either fallen to the ground or fled. The Raiders stopped a second charge in like fashion. The Japanese snipers, however, kept the Raiders occupied for hours, and the Raiders had few hours to spend on the mission before they would have to return to the submarines. Lieutenant Le Francois saw Corporal I. B. Earles running around in a frenzy after receiving a hit from a sniper’s bullet. “Blood ran from his mouth and the men kept begging him to lie still,” Le Francois recollected. Earles, his rage mounting, shouted, “I’ll get those heathens by myself! Show me where they are!” The corporal sprinted into a thicket and started shooting every Japanese he could find, whether dead or alive, until he himself was killed.
Carlson chose not to send any Raiders to destroy the island’s radio facilities or military installations, which had been designated the battalion’s primary objectives, for fear that it would expose the Marines to ambush by superior forces. Reports from local inhabitants suggested that the Japanese might have large groupings of men elsewhere on Makin, and Japanese aircraft had begun bombing and strafing the atoll after the Japanese garrison radioed news of the raid. Convinced that the killing of some Japanese soldiers would be enough to declare the operation a victory, Carlson kept the Raiders focused on eradicating the snipers. In the afternoon, he informed the men that they would return to the submarines in the evening.
Raiders began departing the shore at 7:30 p.m., one boat at a time. Despite the vigorous paddling of exceedingly fit young men, the boats struggled to distance themselves from the shore, shoved back by one large wave after another. Swells crashed over the gunwales, forcing some Raiders to set down their paddles and bail water while the remainder stroked ever more frantically. Boats overturned and disgorged their men, who struggled against the burdens of gear or wounds to swim to safety. An unknown number of men drowned, and at least one was eaten by a shark.
The overturning of boats and the exhaustion of paddlers compelled some of the Raiders to return to the beach, where they rested for a few minutes before trying again. With paddles torn from men’s hands or lost as the result of a capsize, a growing number of Raiders had to row with palm fronds or bare hands. “We paddled and paddled and paddled,” Private First Class Ray Bauml recalled. “My muscles were aching. You could see them almost popping out because they were so strained.” Sergeant Kenneth L. McCullough said that the ordeal in the water was “the toughest thing I’d ever done.” After four or five attempts to reach the submarines, the arm muscles of the men were so spent that they gave up trying and collapsed on the beach.
Eighty of the Raiders were able to reach the submarines, mostly by churning through pockets of water where the tide was less strong and then heading toward the colored lights on the submarines’ conning towers. Lieutenant Oscar Peatross, one of the first Raiders to make it back to the submarines, described the arrival of the men who followed: “This was no longer a team, but a group of humanoids held together only by the boat they rode and their individual wills to survive. Some had their eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare and seemed almost catatonic, paddling like automatons.”
Carlson and Roosevelt were among 120 Raiders whose boats were unable to reach the submarines that night. After the last arm muscles had been drained, Carlson conferred with the other officers on the beach. One man thought it best that they surrender, pointing out that they had little in the way of weapons or ammunition and it was possible that the submarines would depart that night to avoid Japanese aircraft and ships. By some accounts, Carlson accepted this advice and sent a note of surrender to the Japanese, which never arrived because a Raider shot the Japanese soldier to whom the note had been entrusted. Other witnesses, Roosevelt among them, would claim that Carlson never had any intention of surrendering. The Raiders ended up bedding down for the night in the hope of reaching the submarines the next day.
Lieutenant Le Francois, who had been shot in the shoulder during the fighting, lay down to sleep under the cover of bushes with other wounded Marines. At dawn, he awoke to see a beach filled with what he described as “the most disheartened, forlorn, bloody, ragged, disarmed group of men it had ever been my experience to look upon.” He concluded that “despair had frayed their spirits.” The mood brightened considerably, however, at the sight of an American submarine on the horizon. Despite the very r
eal threat of attack by Japanese aircraft or ships, Commodore John Haines, the task force commander, had decided to keep the submarines offshore to retrieve the remaining Raiders. When asked later why he had left the submarines at risk in the waters off Makin, Haines said matter-of-factly, “I didn’t want to go back to the United States, be taken directly to the President, and tell him why I left his son on the island.”
Attempts to paddle from Makin to the submarines had resumed shortly before dawn. Several boats, including one carrying Captain Roosevelt, reached the submarines in good order. Carlson deemed the risk of exposure to Japanese aircraft too dangerous to continue the evacuation in broad daylight, so he ordered the remaining Raiders to a lagoon on the other side of the atoll, where the ocean was considerably calmer, for an evening departure. Sending out patrols during the morning, Carlson learned that few members of the Japanese garrison remained alive. The Raiders therefore spent the day blowing up the radio stations and military facilities that they had come to destroy in the first place. Industrious search crews found a general store, from which they confiscated men’s silk underwear, Japanese beer, and American corned beef. The Raider medical staff took possession of Japanese medical supplies, including high-quality surgical instruments of German manufacture that were put to immediate use on the wounded. The most impressive prize, at least in the judgment of the Raiders, was the samurai sword of the dead Japanese commander. Search parties also located the bodies of eighteen Raiders killed in action the previous day, whose burial they outsourced to the local police chief in exchange for American weapons and fifty US dollars.
