The Daring Dozen (14 page)

Carlson, however, was brutally honest in his assessment of the raid, even admitting in his operational report that he had considered 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 ‘Pistol 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.

With Mount Austen cleared of Japanese troops, Carlson led his men down the northern face and on to Henderson Field. After a month-long patrol he had led his Raiders back to base after a 120-mile march through some of the toughest and most unforgiving terrain on earth. Of the original 266 men whom Carlson had taken into the jungle on 6 November, 209 Raiders had been killed, wounded or evacuated suffering from disease.
^*
The 57 that had made it through to the bitter end, however, were shadows of the men that had marched into the interior of Guadalcanal a month earlier. Some had shed more than two stone in weight.

Carlson and his 2nd Raider Battalion left Guadalcanal on 15 December and celebrated Christmas Day at their old camp at Espiritu Santo. Two weeks later
Newsweek
ran an article trumpeting the achievements of the Raiders on Guadalcanal: ‘Carlson’s boys – officially known as a Marine Raider Battalion – were something new in America warfare. They were America’s first trained guerrillas, whose boast was that they “know how to do anything” and who could prove it.’

And prove it they had, claimed
Newsweek,
just one of several publications to pick up on the exploits of the Raiders.

On 28 December, the same day that the
Newsweek
article appeared in America, General Hajime Sugiyama and Admiral Osami Nagano informed Emperor Hirohito that their position on Guadalcanal had become untenable and a withdrawal was recommended. On 31 December the Emperor accepted the recommendation and an evacuation plan was immediately formulated, to begin in January 1943. By 7 February the Japanese Navy had successfully evacuated more than 10,000 soldiers from Guadalcanal without alerting the Americans to the operation. Nonetheless, on 9 February the Americans were able to declare that the island was free of Japanese.

A week before the declaration Carlson and his men had celebrated the first birthday of the 2nd Raider Battalion, and there had been much to celebrate. Carlson had been awarded his third Navy Cross for his conduct on Guadalcanal, while a host of other men had been decorated for their gallantry during the arduous patrol. The most cherished honour, however, was the unit citation for the Battalion, which stated:

For a period of thirty days this battalion, moving through difficult terrain, pursued, harried and by repeated attacks, destroyed an enemy force of equal or greater size and drove the remnants from the area of operations. During this period, the battalion, as a whole or by detachments, attacked the enemy whenever and wherever he could be found in a series of carefully planned and well executed surprise attacks. In the latter phase of these operations, the battalion destroyed the remnants of enemy forces and bases on the Upper Lunga River and secured valuable information of the terrain and enemy line of operations.

But in March 1943 Carlson’s 2nd Raider Battalion was incorporated into the new First Marine Raider Regiment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alan Shapley. Carlson was sent back to the States to recover from the effects of Guadalcanal, but in a letter to a friend the same month he disclosed that he knew what was really behind the move: ‘I have been kicked upstairs to the No2 job in the regiment. It means that I lost my command.’

The cartel of senior officers in the Marine Corps who had distrusted and disliked Carlson since his days spent in the company of Chinese communists, an antipathy fostered by his cosy relationship with President Roosevelt and his popular image with the press, had exacted their revenge by stripping Carlson of the one job he loved above all others – leading the Raiders. One of the few senior Marine officers who didn’t bear a grudge towards Carlson was Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining, Chief of Staff of the First Marine Division. In his memoirs he reflected: ‘If this Byzantine manoeuvre was conducted to relieve Carlson of command, it gives a momentary glimpse of the dark side of the upper levels of the Marine Corps showing its inflexibility of thought and a compulsive suspicion of all things new and untried. Evans Carlson was worthy of more generous treatment than he received.’
¹⁰