The Daring Dozen (13 page)

Carlson also encouraged his men to examine the causes of the war and learn why Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor and why America was determined to prevail in the Pacific. Though he never expressed a political point of view, despite his close relationship with the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, Carlson was less reticent when it came to religion. Men who served in the 2nd Raider Battalion recalled their commanding officer speaking to them often about religion, a theme that was addressed by a war correspondent. ‘I’m an out-and-out pacifist,’ replied Carlson when asked how a man who professed to be religious could lead a Special Forces unit. ‘But when an aggressor strikes I do not believe in calmly permitting his steam roller to run over me. It is necessary to resist, to whip the aggressor with one hand, while with the other we work even harder to build a social order in which war will not be necessary as an instrument for adjusting human differences.’
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Once the raiders were physically fit and technically proficient, they were schooled in Carlson’s guerrilla warfare. Applying to his battalion what he learned from his time in Nicaragua and China, Carlson sub-divided each of the four companies into ten-man squads; the squads in turn were divided into three three-man fire-teams, each led by a non-commissioned officer. In doing this Carlson believed the squad leaders would be able to concentrate more on winning the contact with the enemy rather than worrying about all the men under his command; instead he gave orders to his three fire-team leaders who in turn passed the orders on to the men in their teams.

The fire-teams were also equipped with a devastating array of weaponry, comprising one M1 rifle, a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and a Thompson sub-machine gun. Carlson was determined that in any fight with the Japanese, his men would have the superior firepower. To obtain the weapons, Carlson asked James Roosevelt to use his connections, much to the chagrin of fellow Marine officers who were increasingly hostile to the 2nd Raider Battalion. Brigadier General Alexander Vandegrift, commander of the First Marine Division, admitted that the 2nd Raider Battalion ‘annoyed the hell out of me but there wasn’t one earthly thing I could do about it’.

In March 1942 the Raiders spent three weeks practising beach assaults off the California coast, and the following month the battalion was strengthened by the arrival of 250 new recruits, expanding the number of companies to six. In May the battalion – with Carlson promoted to lieutenant colonel and Roosevelt to major – sailed to Hawaii, from where two companies were dispatched to help reinforce Midway Island in the North Pacific Ocean, a 2.4-square-mile atoll 3,200 miles west of San Francisco and 2,500 miles east of Tokyo that the Americans feared Japan wanted to seize as an air base.

Carlson sent C and D companies to the island with orders to ‘sell out dearly’ when the Japanese invaded. The aerial bombardment began on 4 June when 108 aircraft took off from four Japanese carriers and attacked; although they all but annihilated the inferior American fighter planes, they caused little damage to the defenders on Midway. In contrast when the US Navy engaged the Japanese aircraft carriers they sank all four, causing irreparable damage to Japan’s fighting capabilities in the Pacific.

Carlson had only agreed reluctantly to send two companies to Midway; it was not the sort of guerrilla action for which his battalion had been formed. In July 1942, however, at the behest of Franklin Roosevelt, the Raiders were given the opportunity to prove their mettle. The president wanted the military to launch an audacious raid on a Japanese target, a feat that would boost the morale of the public to follow the Doolittle Raid on Honshu by the US Army Air Force in April.

The target chosen was Makin Island (present day Butaritari) and the unit given the honour of making the first land assault against Japanese forces was Carlson’s 2nd Raider Battalion. Makin was a small island measuring eight miles in length and one and a half miles at its widest point, situated approximately 1,100 miles east of Papua New Guinea. It conformed to the stereotype of the tropical island with its lagoon, coconut trees and plentiful mangroves, along with two villages at opposite ends of the island and a number of government buildings.

The Japanese had landed on Makin on 10 December 1941, installing a garrison under the command of Sergeant Major Kanemitsu with a seaplane base, two radio stations and a weather station.

The aim of the raid, apart from a propaganda coup for America, was to obtain intelligence on the Japanese forces in the area (Makin was reported to be the base for all Japanese activity in the Gilbert Islands) and distract the enemy’s attention from the impending invasion of the much more important island of Guadalcanal, 1,000 miles to the south-west. Carlson was informed by his superiors that intelligence on the strength of the garrison was vague, but it was believed to be anywhere between 100- and 200-strong. In fact Kanemitsu had no more than 100 men under his command.

Carlson selected his two most experienced companies for the mission, A and B, and several rehearsals were conducted using the limited information available of the disposition of the Japanese forces and the topography of the island. Included in the practice runs was James Roosevelt, even though Carlson was reluctant to include the president’s son in the raid. Roosevelt had lived up to the standards of a Marine officer but Carlson was concerned for his welfare during the raid; if he fell into enemy hands the propaganda consequences would be unimaginable. Ultimately it was James Roosevelt himself who decided the issue, insisting to both his father and Carlson that he fulfil his role as executive officer of the Raider Battalion.

The 134 raiders left Hawaii at 0900hrs on 8 August 1942 for the 2,030-mile journey to Makin on board the submarines
Nautilus
and
Argonaut
. Inside the vessels Carlson briefed his men once more on the plan: they would assault the ocean side of the island, not the more heavily defended lagoon side, with A Company under First Lieutenant Merwyn Plumley hitting Beach Y and Captain Ralph Coyte landing on Beach Z. Once ashore the raiders would advance rapidly across the island and attack the Japanese from the rear, eventually the two companies closing to rendezvous at Makin’s church.

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.