by Mark Moyar
By evening, the Raiders had tied together the four remaining rubber boats and attached two engines that the most mechanically gifted men had managed to bring to life. Loading up the wounded and the booty, they headed out from the lagoon at 8:30 p.m. Not far from the shore, one engine sputtered out, and for a time progress was so slow as to suggest that they would never reach the submarines. The Raiders in one of the four boats thought it would be better for all concerned if they separated from the other three and paddled manually. Carlson consented.
The lone boat and its crew would never reach the submarines. Accounts from Makin’s inhabitants indicate that the boat eventually returned to the atoll, and that its occupants were subsequently apprehended and beheaded by the Japanese. The separation may, however, have been the decisive factor in the progress of the other three boats. With one less boat to propel, the remaining engine and the paddlers eventually delivered the Raiders to the waiting Nautilus.
Lieutenant Peatross witnessed this arrival as well. “Never before or since have I seen such a motley looking group of humans or such an outlandish looking craft as that which came alongside the Nautilus that night,” Peatross testified. “In comparison, the Raiders who came out the first night would have looked healthy.” Peatross described Carlson as “a walking skeleton.” In the forty-three hours that had elapsed since the arrival at Makin, Carlson “seemed to have aged at least ten years.”
After all heads had been counted, it was determined that a total of thirty Raiders were dead or missing. Many more had been injured, of whom the most serious cases would undergo surgery in the fetid confines of the submarines. Commodore Haines, convinced that staying longer to search for the missing boat was not worth the risk, ordered the submarines to dive beneath the waves and make a course for Hawaii.
FOURTEEN HUNDRED MILES to the southwest, in the Solomon Islands, Merritt Edson’s 1st Raider Battalion undertook its first raid on August 7. A native of Chester, Vermont, Edson was the polar opposite of Carlson in most respects. Carlson’s intellectual flamboyance, his love of guerrilla warfare theory, his cavorting with the press and the president’s son, all earned the scorn of Edson. Hard-bitten, laconic, and humorless, Edson had little concern for the opinions of journalists or any other human beings. Carlson’s admiration for the Chinese Communists was a dangerous delusion in the eyes of the conservative Edson, who himself had seen radicals firsthand in Nicaragua during the 1920s while leading Marines against Augusto César Sandino’s leftist rebels.
The combat correspondent Richard Tregaskis observed of Edson: “His eyes were as cold as steel, and it was interesting to notice that even when he was being pleasant, they never smiled.” Edson had passion, but it became evident only at times of great peril, at which point it overwhelmed the passions of other men. Whereas the surrender discussion at Makin Atoll had caused subordinates to question Carlson’s toughness, no one ever doubted Edson’s desire to fight. Some of his men would later complain that he was altogether too eager to lead his unit into peril, attaching to him the sobriquet of “Mad Merritt the Morgue Master.”
The island of Tulagi, where Edson’s first raid was to take place, measured just 1,000 yards wide by 4,000 yards long. The Japanese had occupied the small island in May 1942, and they were now in the process of constructing a seaplane base in the harbor. Edson’s Raiders and a regular Marine battalion boarded landing craft in the dark for a dawn landing. To minimize the chances of encountering Japanese soldiers on the beach, where the team playing defense would hold the greatest advantages over the team on offense, the Marines landed at a beach abutting the most densely vegetated section of the island.
Finding no one at this beach, the Marines chopped through the greenery in the direction of the harbor. At 11:30 a.m., Edson fired a green flare to signal the beginning of an attack on the island’s garrison. The Japanese forces, consisting of 350 crack troops from the Special Naval Landing Forces, stoutly resisted the Marines from machine-gun nests and trees, in much the same way as the defenders at Makin. Here, too, the Marines found it particularly difficult to find and kill snipers perched in coconut trees. “We thought that coconut trees would not have enough branches to conceal snipers,” said Major Justice Chambers, a company commander. “But we found that the Japs were small enough to hide in them easily and so we had to examine every tree before we went by.”
In the afternoon, the Raiders fought their way up the island’s spinal ridge, seizing the clubhouse of a golf course that had been built by British colonial authorities. Their advance bogged down in a former British cricket field, which was located in a ravine surrounded by limestone walls. Japanese troops, firing from holes dug into the limestone, held the Marines at bay into the evening.
At 10:30 p.m., the Japanese counterattacked. Cutting off one of Edson’s companies from the others, they pressed toward the battalion headquarters. Edson described the night’s action to Tregaskis in his customary manner. “The Japs worked their way along the ridge, and came to within fifty to seventy-five yards of my command post,” Edson narrated. “The Nips were using hand grenades, rifles and machine guns. We suffered quite a few casualties, as our men fought hard to hold the Japs back. One machine-gun company lost 50 percent of its non-commissioned officers. Finally, the enemy was thrown back.”
On the following day, the remaining Japanese soldiers stayed on the defensive, shooting at the Marines from caves or bunkers. Marines methodically inserted grenades, satchel charges, or Bangalore torpedoes into these cavities, one by one. Enough Japanese soldiers survived the day to organize a feeble and futile counterattack that night, the garrison’s last offensive gasp. Over the course of three days, the Marines killed all but 3 of the 350 Japanese defenders, at a cost of 38 Marines killed and 55 wounded.
Edson’s battalion next headed to the nearby island of Guadalcanal. On September 8, they conducted an amphibious landing behind Japanese lines at the village of Tasimboko, where the Japanese had left only a small number of soldiers to guard a major supply depot. Concerned that Japanese forces would rush to Tasimboko upon learning that Americans had seized their logistical hub, the Raiders did not haul away most of what they found, but instead destroyed it. Splitting open thousands of bags of rice, they burned the grains or threw them in the surf. Marines bayoneted tins of crabmeat and cans of beef, although only after each man had taken as many tins and cans as he could carry on his person. They also hauled off 21 cases of Japanese beer and 17 flasks of sake. Only 2 Raiders perished and only 6 were wounded before the battalion made its escape.
Tasimboko was just the kind of raid that Edson and other Raider proponents had been hoping to execute. Edson’s biggest accomplishment on Guadalcanal, however, would come during conventional combat against regular Japanese infantry. After Tasimboko, the 1st Raider Battalion was posted on a coral ridge overlooking Henderson Field, an airstrip vital to supplying and defending Guadalcanal. To protect Henderson Field against a sneak attack from the adjacent jungle, the 1st Raider Battalion and 1st Marine Parachute Battalion established a perimeter extending from the hogback-shaped coral ridge onto the flat ground between the ridge and the jungle.
On the night of September 12, Japanese soldiers struck the sector of the perimeter held by Edson’s Charlie company. Sneaking inside the Raider perimeter undetected, the Japanese began the battle with simultaneous attacks on Charlie company’s foxholes from every side. Several of the company’s platoons attempted to withdraw in order to avoid complete destruction. “People were crawling in all directions,” said Joseph M. Rushton, a Browning Automatic Rifle man in Charlie company. “It wasn’t long before they were overrun by the swarming attackers of the main charge. It was horrible and frightening hearing our small group of overrun Raiders screaming as the bastards bayoneted and hacked them with their Samurai swords.” Raiders formed a new defensive line behind the area that had belonged to Charlie company. The remainder of the night was largely quiet save for the shrieks of captured Raiders whom the Japanese were torturing.
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br /> In the morning, Edson attempted to push the Japanese off the ground they had taken, but the Japanese parried his lunge. In anticipation of another Japanese night attack, Edson moved more Marines onto the hogbacked ridge during the afternoon, thinning out the lower positions into little more than tripwires. With the arrival of darkness, nervous Marines on the perimeter scanned the jungle for any possible sign of Japanese troops. “It is amazing what you think you are seeing to the front at night,” recounted Sergeant Frank Guidone. “Outlines of the brush take on the shape of a figure and if you stare long enough it will move.” Guidone kept thinking to himself, “Is this the ending of my life? Eighteen years—ending up in a dark jungle as a corpse.”
The edginess of the Marines was sharpened at 9 p.m. by salvoes from Japanese destroyers, which forced the Marines to crawl into their foxholes as far as humanly possible. The expectant silence that followed the bombardment ended abruptly with a surge of Japanese troops through the tripwires. Marines fell back on the slopes while American artillery rounds soared in and the Marines on the ridge spewed bullets and grenades at rows of advancing Japanese infantry.
Enough Japanese survived the American outpouring to organize an assault up the ridge. A Japanese battalion commander drew his sword and rushed forward, followed by riflemen howling “Banzai!” and “Death to Roosevelt!” From foxholes across the ridge, the Raiders and paratroopers mowed the attackers down with crisscrossing fire. The Japanese soon conceded failure, and the survivors ran back into the jungle.
Next came a second, more powerful assault. After peppering the ridge with smoke grenades to impair American vision, two Japanese battalions stormed onto the slopes. The Marines responded with small arms and a deluge of highly accurate artillery, littering the ridge with dead and dying Japanese. The Japanese battalions nonetheless breached the Marine lines in several places along the center of the ridge. Raiders and paratroopers in those sectors attempted to pull back, which in the dark proved to be chaotic and counterproductive.
Edson, standing ten to twenty yards behind what remained of the Marine defensive line in the center, hollered directions and encouragement with a complete indifference to personal safety, which did much to stiffen the resolve of the discouraged and convince the retreating to return to their foxholes. “The only difference between you and the Japs is they’ve got more guts!” Edson yelled. “Get back!” When Marines from the parachute battalion wavered for what appeared to be reasons of inadequate leadership, Edson took the extraordinary step of relieving his fellow battalion commander and replacing him with a parachute officer whom Edson deemed a better man for the job.
As the Japanese assault came nearer his command post, Edson mounted the highest point on the ridge. “Raiders, parachuters, engineers, artillerymen, I don’t give a damn who you are,” he thundered. “You’re all Marines. Come up on this hill and fight!”
Raider casualties in the center reached such alarming proportions that Edson decided to notify Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining, the operations officer of the 1st Marine Division, that the enemy could plow through his center “like shit through a tin horn.” If Edson’s center broke, the Japanese would be free to overrun the division command post and advance on Henderson Field.
At this, the 1st Division committed its reserve battalion to the ridge. Fresh Marines arrived in time to patch holes left by the fallen and reconstitute the center of the line. The Marines hung onto the ridge until daybreak, at which time US aircraft arrived to strafe and bomb the remaining Japanese. Crippled by the night’s combat, the Japanese quit the battlefield.
In the three days of battle on what became known as Edson’s Ridge, the Raiders sustained 135 casualties. The 1st Marine Parachute Battalion incurred 128 casualties, and other US units took 53. An official Japanese report put Japanese casualties at roughly 1,200, though other Japanese sources suggest that the total may have been much higher. By saving Henderson Field from capture, Edson’s Raiders and the other Marine combatants ensured that enough American reinforcements would arrive on Guadalcanal to finish off the Japanese in the months ahead.
Among those reinforcements would be the 2nd Raider Battalion, which set foot on Guadalcanal at the beginning of November 1942. Carlson intended to lead his battalion on a prolonged raid in the enemy’s rear, marching into one Japanese flank and out the other. It would be a highly risky endeavor, as the battalion would be far removed from any friendly forces and dangerously close to large concentrations of enemy soldiers. Keeping the Raiders resupplied would be exceptionally difficult, so difficult that Marine skeptics predicted confidently that the Raiders would run out of food and ammunition in the middle of the operation.
Carlson’s Raiders set out on November 6 with four days’ worth of food. The primary staple was rice, which they would boil in their helmets. Other provisions included bacon, raisins, and tea. Carlson planned to rely on local guides for resupply until they were deep into hostile territory, at which time low-flying US aircraft would drop them hundred-pound bundles.
Once inside the jungle, the Raiders quickly acquired an intimate acquaintance with Guadalcanal’s liana vines. Laced with barbs, the vines slashed through clothing and lacerated flesh as effortlessly as a razor blade through a peach, leaving Raiders spotted with bleeding and festering sores. Infernal heat and the stench of sweaty clothes were nearly as oppressive as they had been during the submarine expedition to Makin, though these torments were relieved from time to time by the fording of rivers.
Patrolling and scouting in small detachments, Carlson’s Raiders engaged in intermittent combat with Japanese troops, most of whom were caught unawares and in small numbers, since Americans were not supposed to be so far behind the front lines. Some of the Japanese soldiers, however, proved to be vicious and implacable foes. After the Japanese tortured one Raider, castrated him, and stuffed his testicles into his mouth, the Americans dispensed with all thoughts of taking prisoners.
Although the Raiders shed a good deal of weight during the raid, they received air-dropped food consistently enough to keep going for the thirty days it took to complete the mission. Disease, wounds, and exhaustion proved to be greater scourges, turning the evacuation of Raiders into a routine occurrence. As the days accumulated, what had once been extraordinary feats of strength and endurance were no longer possible, and what had once been ordinary marches were now extraordinary and desperate exertions upon which their lives depended. “Everybody was getting pretty beat,” Private First Class Jesse Vanlandingham said in describing the latter days of the raid. “There was an awful lot of jock itch. We had one guy in our squad covered with it. I don’t know how he could wear any clothes it was so painful. We all had it to a certain extent. We’d had the same underwear on for thirty days.” When Carlson’s Raiders reached the end of the 150-mile trek on December 4, only 57 of the original 266 Raiders stepped across the finish line. Seventeen Raiders had been killed, an equal number had been evacuated for wounds, and the rest had been evacuated for disease or exhaustion.
Carlson would tout the raid as a major success, which it undeniably was. According to the battalion’s records, the Raiders killed 488 Japanese during the month-long operation. Navy Seabees who later searched the area counted 700 Japanese bodies. The Raiders also destroyed hundreds of Japanese weapons, including “Pistol Pete,” a set of howitzers that had been a constant menace to the Marines at Henderson Field.
News of the long raid met with great enthusiasm in the United States, at a time when the nation badly needed battlefield successes and heroes. “Carlson’s boys,” reported Newsweek, were “America’s first trained guerrillas, whose boast was that they ‘know how to do anything,’ and could prove it.” The periodical explained that “the Raiders took ‘graduate work’ in military mayhem, at camps and for periods which still remain a strict secret.” Journalist Wesley Price likened Carlson to Abraham Lincoln and Gary Cooper, asserting that “Lt. Col. Evans Fordyce Carlson writes books, kills Japs, plays the harmonica and speaks Chi
nese. He can deliver polished lectures on Asiatic problems, swim an ice-flocked river naked and exist on a half-sock of rice a day.” Executives at Universal Studios commissioned a feature film on the exploits of Carlson’s battalion, with Randolph Scott playing the role of Carlson.
The publicity surrounding the Raiders encouraged Admiral Nimitz to request two more Raider battalions, the 3rd and 4th. General Holcomb, the Marine commandant, again raised objections. First, he said, the Marine Corps did not have enough men to form additional Raider units while still maintaining three Marine Corps divisions. Second, special units deprived regular units of the leaders they needed and deserved. Third, raiding operations were not “sufficiently profitable to justify the organization of special units.” Fourth, all Marine infantry battalions could conduct raids.
As before, Holcomb’s protestations did him no good. Bowing to the will of higher authorities, the Marine Corps formed the 3rd Raider Battalion at Samoa, and the 4th Raider Battalion at Camp Pendleton.
In July 1943, the 4th Raider Battalion joined forces with the 1st Raider Battalion and two US Army battalions in the invasion of New Georgia, the largest of the western Solomon Islands. Landing unopposed, they trudged across eight miles of swamp, jungle, and river, their misery magnified by a driving rain. Their reward was the surprise and defeat of a Japanese force at Enogai, whose commander had thought it impossible for anyone to attack through the terrain that had just been traversed.
After the Raiders had taken their initial objective, higher headquarters sent them on conventional infantry assaults against other elements of the Japanese garrison, who were now aware of the American presence in their neighborhood and were preparing accordingly. The Marines would blame the woes that followed on the micromanagement of Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, the commander of Amphibious Forces South Pacific. Lieutenant Colonel Twining of the 1st Division derided Turner for “playing soldier,” adding for good measure that he was “a loud, strident, arrogant person who enjoyed settling all matters by simply raising his voice and roaring like a bull captain in the old navy.”
