Guadalcanal, with ‘its mountains cutting the island lengthwise in an even wall of blue and green, with peaks tapering into the cloud masses of a brilliant tropical sky’, looks pleasant enough from a distance. But from these mountans coral ridges reach towards the beach. Some are covered in knife-edged kunae grass high enough to catch a man’s throat, and on other spurs lush jungle blacks out the sun from steep ravine sides cut by torrential streams that carry water northward from the rugged interior. Incessantly damp from one of the highest rainfalls in the world, with debilitating humidity, malaria mosquitoes, stinging ants, and disease-carrying black fly, this is an unhealthy—even hellish—island. There were hopes of using the independent battlions to mop up Japanese units on islands by-passed in the later sweeps towards Japan, but the Marine Corps Commandant and other senior officers saw the dangers in diluting regular battalions through further drafts of their best men to the Raiders, and formation in the field of a second ‘2nd Raiders’ was abandoned. However, a 3rd Battalion was formed in Samoa, and a 4th raised in California during October that year, 1942.
Two companies of Raiders had made one uneventful patrol in an APD in the first few days of September on coming over to Guadalcanal, and they were to make a landing the next week from three destroyers at Tasimboko, 20 miles (32km) east along the coast from Lunga Point. Coming ashore before dawn on Tuesday, 8 September, three companies of the 1st Raiders swung west, supported by 23 planes flown by USMC pilots and by two warships. Moving against the rear of the Japanese positions facing Henderson Field, the Raiders were heavily engaged by mid-morning. The paramarine companies now under Merritt Edson’s command were also landed by boats as the battle developed against the flank of some 4,000 men of the Kawaguchi force preparing to retake the airfield. This morning the Japanese withdrew, but they would fight within the week.
After destroying the abandoned Japanese camp, the Raiders and paramarines were brought back to the main beachhead around Henderson Field. Anticipating the renewed Japanese counter-attacks against this perimeter, the 1st Raiders and three paramarine companies were sent forward on Saturday night (12 September) to take up positions across a ridge rising southward from the airfield over open ground to the edge of the jungle. When they had dug in across the ridge, their line of defended positions ran from the east bank of the Lunga River to the paramarines’ positions of the east side of the ridge—a line some 500 yards forward of the main perimeter. The whole beachhead was overlooked by Japanese observers on the lower slopes of Mount Austen 1,000 yards further south-west, so these dispositions, which formed a breakwater against mass attacks rolling against the southern perimeter, were clearly seen by them.
Throughout Sunday the marines dug in, improving their fox holes and network of mutually defended positions under sporadic sniper fire from units they had bumped against several times the previous night. Shortly after nightfall the first attack came in against the right and centre of the marines’ line, and during the next few hours the Japanese made more than a dozen frontal attacks—screaming waves of assault troops from three battalions of Major-General Kiyotake Kawaguchi’s brigade. By 2200 hours that night, two under-strength parachute companies and B Company (less one platoon) of the 1st Raiders faced two enemy battalions on the left of the ridge; the enemy along the battle line outnumbered the marines by 2 to 1. The shouts of the Japanese, and their methodical use of flares announcing each renewed attack, gave the marines some points of aim, but for 10 hours they were locked in hand-to-hand fighting. Insults were shouted at the marines in the hope of making them lose their tempers and then rashly expose their positions. There were shouts of ‘Gas … gas’ in the hope that this might put the marines in some panic. But there were more than words, more than sticks and stones, for the Japanese made their usually expert use of mortars, cutting off the forward marine positions from immediate support with a wall of mortar bombs around the fox holes. Taking every advantage of dead ground and other cover, the Japanese came forward. The 105mm (4.1in) American howitzers in the perimeter were elevated dangerously high, lobbing shells almost back on the gun crews as they fired at below the howitzer’s minimum safety range. Blind in the dark and smoke, these crews ranged their guns, by ear on occasions, at the uproar from the enemy assembly areas. At other times the guns were ranged by map reference, even though the ‘cartographic date’ was poor; the maps were inadequate because details familiar to gunners in Europe were not shown. Despite these handicaps, the gunners’ superb performance saved the Raiders as frenzied assault waves drove them back in a tight perimeter around the centre of the ridge. Here they held on, preventing any Japanese who got through the barrage from reaching in any strength the borders of Henderson Field. Only two small groups got as far as the rear areas, here four enemy killed a sergeant with a sword blow before they were shot near the 1 Marine Division’s command tent. Feints against other sectors east and west of the Raider’s positions caused some sensible delay before marine reserves were committed, but at the height of the Kawaguchi attacks the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Marines was sent forward. Despite the Japanese ruses to unnerve them with shouts of ‘Gas—gas’ and insults tempting marines from their cover, the Raiders and the 2nd Marine Battalion kept their heads and the defence positions.
At dawn on Monday the remnants of the Kawaguchi force could be seen withdrawing towards the lower slopes of Mount Austen. The Kawaguchi force was broken. They had fought, as the Japanese would do throughout the war, with fanatical bravery, and although they had no artillery support in their assault on Edson’s ridge they were able to press forward despite the losses from American shell fire. The raiders came off the ridge on Tuesday 15 September having lost 20 per cent of their strength in this battle of Bloody Ridge.
The 2nd Raiders, rested after Makin, came to Guadalcanal on 4 November, landing at Aola ahead of a defence battalion and a construction battalion to build a new air-strip, 25 miles (40km) east of Henderson Field. For the Americans, the crucial battles would be fought at sea in the next few weeks, when Japanese attempts to neutralise Henderson Field by a sea bombardment failed and many of their transports were sunk bringing the 38 Division to Guadalcanal, despite the superior naval strength of the Japanese west of the island. While these battles were fought, and while American army troops reinforced the marines in the main perimeter, Evans Carlson led a 30-day patrol by the 2nd Raiders inland, parallel to the coast and westward to beyond the main perimeter. Their first base was established at Binu on 9 November ‘because it was located about 3 miles (5km) south-east of the enemy and placed my forces to cover the enemy’s rear (south side) … also Binu was the last place between the Balesuma river and the division’s positions … where natives still resided, making easy the task of securing information and carriers’—to quote Evans Carlson’s report. The enemy were boxed in by the main marine force. The Colonel planned to fan out strong patrols each with a TBX radio coming on the air every two hours to report to the battalion’s command post. When contact was made the plan was to concentrate the battalion and destroy any enemy force slipping south into the mountains.
On 11 November C Company on one of these patrols ran into a Japanese force about 1010 hours, they were three miles (5km) west of Binu. The Japanese took advantage of the marines’ difficulties in concentrating the battalion, and moved their major force though woods running south between grassy fields, a smaller party turning west possibly to attack the airfield at Cactus. Evans Carlson decided to attack the main force and leave those moving westward for later mopping up.
F Company made a forced march that morning to return to Binu about 1300 hours, and the Colonel decided they should rest and be fed before he took them up to C Company’s positions where they arrived—after an hour’s march—about 1630. C Company were bogged down, their initial success that morning had been thwarted by the Japanese troops’ quick recovery, for after the marines’ scouts caught the enemy camped in a wood, heavy Japanese fire came down on the platoons in open country running up to the wood.
Most of the afternoon had passed before the marines extracted themselves back the 700 yards (630m) to cover. Evans Carlson sent F Company down a finger of wood where many of the enemy mortars and machine guns had been hidden, and two fighter-bombers were called in ‘dropping their bombs on target’ further into the woods during the attack that went in at 1745. F Company’s advance enabled B Company to cross the open ground, but the Japanese had withdrawn all but a few snipers and the wood was cleared by 1830.
Night fell and the battalion withdrew ‘as we were unfamiliar with the terrain’. F Company was left to hold the wood until morning. Although they had failed to concentrate as quickly as the Colonel planned—even in the last stages of the battle E Company had failed to disengage from their action by the river and block the enemy’s late afternoon retreat—the Raiders had prevented the enemy concentrating his much stronger force, and the Colonel’s next move was to Asamana where there were positions the Japanese had prepared for a battalion or more. In the three days from the 12 to 14 November many Japanese messengers were killed coming into these positions and on the 13 November five attacks by ‘companies … in massed columns, each individual being covered from head to hips in a curtain of foliage’ were broken up as mortar and artillery fire fell on what appeared as ‘a patch of brush’. These and later actions are summarised in the diagram.
A typical Raider company patrol made use of the flexible organisation and might—on Guadalcanal or elsewhere—include three rifle platoons, a weapons platoon, and company headquarters. Each platoon’s three squads were divided into three fire-teams, giving squad corporals better control than when working with nine individuals. The weapon platoon in each company might have three Sections—two with a pair of the quick firing Browning light machine guns (see Appendix 3) and the third Section with 60mm (2.4in) mortars. (But the organisation was changed to suit specific operations and only representative examples are shown in Appendix 2). This organisation placed the weapons for immediate supporting fire under the command of each company. The company commander also had 15 men in the headquarters who might act as a reserve of riflemen, but who were also each trained as a sniper or a demolition man. The arguments for putting a major part of the machine-gun and mortar support in a weapons company under battalion control may be suited for routine infantry deployment, but in the opinion of Evans Carlson, supported by Major-General Alexander A. Vandegrift who commanded the 1 Marine Division on Guadalcanal, the organisation of support weapons within companies was superior for the Raider’s operations. This helped the six companies of the 2nd Raiders with their headquarters company—seven in all—fighting as large company patrols more often than as a battalion. The arrangement also spread the risk among several APDs rather than risking the majority of its heavy weapons in one ship that might be sunk or delayed. The 1st Raiders did have some support weapons with each rifle company—two 60mm mortars and two Browning machine-guns in a small platoon of support weapons.
After their actions on Guadalcanal, both the 1st and 2nd Raiders were regrouped under the command of the 1st Raider Regiment in March 1943, along with the 3rd and 4th Raider Battalions. From their bases in American Samoa and French New Caledonia, over 1,000 miles (1,600 + km) east of the Solomons, they were used to spearhead a number of landings described in their brief histories in Appendix 7.
Late in June two companies of the 4th Raiders and half the HQ company, a force of some 150 men, landed under Lieutenant-Colonel Currin on the east coast of New Georgia, where they joined the coast watchers at Segi Point. This patrol reported Japanese movement to reinforce the defences of the key Munda airstrip, cleverly sited behind swamps in the west of the island. Six days later, Currin, in a war canoe, led his men from Segi Point along the coast to land from inflatables near Viru harbour on 27 June: their intention was to destroy the coast guns before the main force landed to take the harbour. Trekking waist-deep at times in mangrove swamps under heavy rain, the Raiders had some setbacks (see Appendix 7) but by the evening of 1 July they had moved inland around the harbour and taken from the rear its main defences on the western shore of the narrow entrance. Other Raiders were active on the north-west coast of the island, and on 5 July the New Zealand-led 1 Commando Fiji Guerrillas—known to the Americans as Fiji Scouts—landed from canoes east of Munda to establish an observation post on high ground behind the Japanese positions. After moving a mile inland, they were in contact with the enemy. However, the Fijians moved silently, only firing when they had a target, in contrast to the heavy fire laid down by US Army formations before an advance. Although on this occasion the commandos did not reach the high ground, they later carried out a number of long patrols (see Appendix 7) behind enemy lines.
Casualties and sickness through this and other campaigns that summer severely reduced the Raider battalions’ fighting strength, with only some 260 fit men in the 2nd Raiders that August, and the 1st Raiders down to 676 men against an established strength of 1,106 all ranks by 1943. Nevertheless, in the autumn of 1943, the 2nd Raider Regiment (Provisional) was formed to co-ordinate the Raiders operations against Bougainville, one of the largest of the Solomon Islands.
There were to be many more amphibious operations in the Far East, but for the marines advancing across the Central Pacific these would not be the soldier’s battles of small units in thick jungle. Their first, 43/4 landings were on the atolls and tiny islands of the Gilberts and Marshalls, each with their small land area and difficult approaches across reefs and surf as at Makin; then through the islands of the Japanese inner defence ring at Guam and Okinawa among other heavily defended bases captured after artillery, naval, and air bombardment: a series of slogging matches on the atolls that left little room for outflanking or other raids, and then against sophisticated beach defences and hostile islands. No doubt with these prospects in mind the Raider battalions were reassigned to a newly formed 4th Marine Regiment. The men of the original 4th Marines had stood against the Japanese for five months in the siege of Corregidor, when guns on the mainland of the Philippines pulverised their defences and air bombardment was practically continuous.
The War Plans Division of the Chief of Naval Operations brought the Raiders into the 4th Marines because ‘a separate regiment … in lieu of abolishing raiders … will be specially trained for raider operations but will be organised and equipped so it can be effectively employed as a standard infantry regiment … such a separate regiment will find frequent employment … primarily as shock troops or to augment divisional troops’. This begs a number of questions on encumbering Special Forces with gear for a defensive role—discussed in Chapter 14—but as the 4th Marines the old Raiders were to land at Guam in July 1944, and on Okinawa in April 1945. Long before these actions, they took part in the last Solomon Islands landing, unopposed in taking Emirau in the Matthais group 200 miles north-west of Raboul, thus slamming the door on this Japanese stronghold which was being by-passed in New Britain.
The lessons of Guadalcanal and other Solomon Islands landings were mainly to benefit General MacArthur’s army command in matters of jungle fighting and malaria control as they continued jungle campaigns through New Guinea and the Philippines. But the wider implications of mounting amphibious assaults on a grand scale would benefit all Allied planning of future invasions, as the annotations on the British copies of reports on these Pacific actions suggest. As far as weapons were concerned, the marines on Guadalcanal had .300 calibre Springfields, which compared unfavourably with the US army’s Garand rifle. This robust weapon of the same calibre had better fire-power, although its 8-round clip could be wasteful of ammunition for it was usual to put in a fresh one before the next Banzai charge as topping up a clip was a difficult job. The mechanical reloading (see Appendix 3) made the weapon easy to use in rapid fire, and its hitting power was much greater than the carbine’s, the Garand having nearly 50 per cent greater muzzle velocity at over 2,700 feet per second, which approached that of the BAR. This velocity, like the range, varied with the type of bullet, but af
ter August 1944, when ball ammunition was in general issue, the Garand could be used effectively at 2,000 yards (1800m) to ‘search’ the reverse slopes of a hill. Despite its weight at 9½lb (4kg) to the carbine’s 5½lb (2.5kg) and the smaller magazine with eight rounds to the carbine’s 15 or 30, the marines preferred it. Dowsed in salt water, covered in sand, tangled by jungle vines, it still fired eight fast rounds, and the large aperture back-sight gave a reasonable aim in even the poor pre-dawn light; with telescopic sights, the Garand made a sniper’s shot deadly at 700 yards (630m).
The Thompson sub-machine gun, of which a Raiding battalion had about 200, was a delightful weapon to fire, and an experienced shot could get off single rounds although his weapon was on automatic fire. The mechanism, however, was complicated and easily fouled by grit, sand, or salt corrosion. Nor, for other reasons, was this weapon the answer to every raider’s or commando’s prayer. The effective and accurate range was limited to tens rather than hundreds of yards, and even though it could be fired at a rate of 600 to 725 rounds a minute, the actual rate was always limited by the time needed to change magazines. More comparisons are shown in Appendix 3 dealing with weapons, but in the same way that the weight of ammunition for mortars was a factor in the logistics of amphibious raiding, so also was the weight of .45 inch (11mm) ammunition needed if tommy-guns were fired too frequently in long and literally heavy burst.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 16
