_by Major Jon T. Hoffman, USMCR_
_In February 1942, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, the Commandant
of the Marine Corps, ordered the creation of a new unit designated the
1st Marine Raider Battalion. This elite force, and its three sister
battalions, went on to gain considerable fame for fighting prowess in
World War II. There is more to the story of these units, however, than
a simple tale of combat heroics. The inception, growth, and sudden end
of the raiders reveals a great deal about the development and conduct
of amphibious operations during the war, and about the challenges the
Corps faced in expanding from 19,000 men to nearly a half million.
The raiders also attracted more than their share of strong leaders.
The resulting combination of courage, doctrine, organization, and
personalities makes this one of the most interesting chapters in Marine
Corps history._
_Creating the Raiders_
Two completely independent forces were responsible for the appearance
of the raiders in early 1942. Several historians have fully traced
one of these sets of circumstances, which began with the friendship
developed between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Evans F. Carlson. As
a result of his experiences in China, Carlson was convinced that
guerrilla warfare was the wave of the future. One of his adherents
in 1941 was Captain James Roosevelt, the president’s son. At the
same time, another presidential confidant, William J. Donovan, was
pushing a similar theme. Donovan had been an Army hero in World War
I and was now a senior advisor on intelligence matters. He wanted to
create a guerrilla force that would infiltrate occupied territory
and assist resistance groups. He made a formal proposal along these
lines to President Roosevelt in December 1941. In January, the younger
Roosevelt wrote to the Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps and
recommended creation of “a unit for purposes similar to the British
Commandos and the Chinese Guerrillas.”
These ideas were appealing at the time because the war was going badly
for the Allies. The Germans had forced the British off the continent of
Europe, and the Japanese were sweeping the United States and Britain
from much of the Pacific. The military forces of the Allies were too
weak to slug it out in conventional battles with the Axis powers, so
guerrilla warfare and quick raids appeared to be viable alternatives.
The British commandos had already conducted numerous forays against
the European coastline, and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill
enthusiastically endorsed the concept to President Roosevelt. The
Marine Commandant, Major General Thomas Holcomb, allegedly succumbed to
this high-level pressure and organized the raider battalions, though
he himself thought that any properly trained Marine unit could perform
amphibious raids.
That scenario is mostly accurate, but it tells only half of the story.
Two other men also were responsible for the genesis of the raiders. One
was General Holland M. Smith. Although the Marine Corps Schools had
created the first manual on amphibious operations in 1935, during the
early days of World War II Smith faced the unenviable task of trying
to convert that paper doctrine into reality. As a brigadier general he
commanded the 1st Marine Brigade in Fleet Landing Exercise 6, which
took place in the Caribbean in early 1940. There he discovered that
several factors, to include the lack of adequate landing craft, made
it impossible to rapidly build up combat power on a hostile shore. The
initial assault elements would thus be vulnerable to counterattack
and defeat while most of the amphibious force remained on board its
transports.
As a partial response to this problem, Smith seized upon the newly
developed destroyer transport. During FLEX 6, his plan called for
the _Manley_ (APD 1) to land a company of the 5th Marines via rubber
boats at H-minus three hours (prior to dawn) at a point away from the
primary assault beach. This force would advance inland, seize key
terrain dominating the proposed beachhead, and thus protect the main
landing from counterattack. A year later, during FLEX 7, Smith had
three destroyer transports. He designated the three companies of the
7th Marines embarked on these ships as the Mobile Landing Group. During
the exercise these units again made night landings to protect the main
assault, or conducted diversionary attacks.
Smith eventually crystallized his new ideas about amphibious
operations. He envisioned making future assaults with three distinct
echelons. The first wave would be composed of fast-moving forces that
could seize key terrain prior to the main assault. This first element
would consist of a parachute regiment, an air infantry regiment
(gliderborne troops), a light tank battalion, and “at least one APD
[highspeed destroyer transport] battalion.” With a relatively secure
beachhead, the more ponderous combat units of the assault force would
come ashore. The third echelon would consist of the reserve force and
service units.
In the summer of 1941 Smith was nearly in a position to put these ideas
into effect. He now commanded the Amphibious Force Atlantic Fleet
(AFAF), which consisted of the 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 1st
Infantry Division. During maneuvers at the recently acquired Marine
base at New River, North Carolina, Smith embarked the 1st Battalion,
5th Marines, in six APDs and made it an independent command reporting
directly to his headquarters. The operations plan further attached
the Marine division’s sole company of tanks and its single company of
parachutists to the APD battalion. The general did not use this task
force to lead the assault, but instead landed it on D plus 2 of the
exercise, on a beach well in the rear of the enemy’s lines. With all
aviation assets working in direct support, the mobile force quickly
moved inland, surprised and destroyed the enemy reserves, and took
control of key lines of communication. Smith called it a “spearhead
thrust around the hostile flank.”
The AFAF commander had not randomly selected the 1st Battalion,
5th Marines, for this role. In June 1941 he personally had picked
Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. “Red Mike” Edson to command that
battalion and had designated it to serve permanently with the Navy’s
APD squadron. Smith began to refer to Edson’s outfit as the “light
battalion” or the “APD battalion.” When the 5th Marines and the
other elements of the 1st Marine Division moved down to New River
that fall, the 1st Battalion remained behind in Quantico with Force
headquarters. Reports going to and from AFAF placed the battalion in
a category separate from the rest of the division of which it was
still technically a part. Lieutenant Colonel Gerald C. Thomas, the
division operations officer, ruefully referred to the battalion as “the
plaything of headquarters.”
Edson’s unit was unique in other ways. In a lengthy August 1941 report,
the lieutenant colonel evaluated the organization and missions of his
unit. He believed that the APD battalion would focus primarily on
reconnaissance, raids, and other special operations--in his mind it
was a waterborne version of the parachutists. In a similar fashion,
the battalion would rely on speed and mobility, not firepower, as its
tactical mainstay. Since the APDs could neither embark nor offload
vehicles, that meant the battalion had to be entirely foot mobile
once ashore, again like the parachutists. To achieve rapid movement,
Edson recommended a new table of organization that made his force much
lighter than other infantry battalions. He wanted to trade in his 81mm
mortars and heavy machine guns for lighter models. There also would
be fewer of these weapons, but they would have larger crews to carry
the ammunition. Given the limitations of the APDs, each company would
be smaller than its standard counterpart. There would be four rifle
companies, a weapons company, and a headquarters company with a large
demolitions platoon. The main assault craft would be 10-man rubber
boats.
The only thing that kept Smith from formally removing the 1st
Battalion, 5th Marines, from the 1st Marine Division was the lack
of troops to make the regiment whole again. As it was, many units of
the division still existed only on paper in the fall of 1941. At the
very beginning of 1942, with the United States now at war and recruits
pouring into the Corps, Smith wrote the Major General Commandant and
asked him to redesignate the battalion. On 7 January Edson received
word that he now headed the 1st Separate Battalion.
A week later James Roosevelt wrote his letter to the Commandant about
raid forces. On 14 January General Holcomb sought the reaction of his
senior generals to the President’s plan to place Donovan in charge of a
Marine Corps version of the commandos. In his 20 January reply to the
younger Roosevelt, the Major General Commandant pointed out that “the
APD Battalion ... is organized, equipped, and trained for this duty,
including in particular the use of rubber boats in night landings.”
He expressed the hope that the Navy would make destroyer transports
available on the West Coast in the near future to support organization
of a second APD battalion there. Holcomb obviously intended to use
Smith’s new force as a convenient means to channel outside interference
toward a useful end. His plan did not entirely work.
On 23 January the Navy leadership, undoubtedly in response to political
pressure, directed the Pacific Fleet to put together a commando-type
unit. The 2d Separate Battalion officially came to life on 4 February.
To ensure that this new organization developed along proper lines,
the Commandant ordered Edson to transfer a one-third slice of his
unit to California as a cadre for the 2d Separate Battalion, which
initially existed only on paper. Headquarters also adopted Red
Mike’s recommended tables of organization and promulgated them to
both battalions. The only change was the addition of an 81mm mortar
platoon (though there was no room on the ships of the APD squadron to
accommodate the increase). Holcomb even offered to transfer Edson to
the 2d Separate, but in the end the Commandant allowed the commanding
general of the 2d Marine Division, Major General Charles F. B. Price,
to place Major Carlson in charge. James Roosevelt became the executive
officer of the unit. In mid-February, at Price’s suggestion, the Major
General Commandant redesignated his new organizations as Marine Raider
Battalions. Edson’s group became the 1st Raiders on 16 February;
Carlson’s outfit was redesignated to the 2d Raiders three days later.
[Sidebar (page 2): Major General Merritt A. Edson, USMC
Merritt A. Edson’s military career began in the fall of 1915 when he
enlisted in the 1st Vermont Infantry (a National Guard outfit). In
the summer of 1916 he served in the Mexican border campaign. When the
United States entered World War I in April 1917, he earned a commission
as a Marine officer, but he did not arrive in France until just before
the Armistice.
He ultimately more than made up for missing out on “the war to end all
wars.” In 1921 he began his long career in competitive shooting as part
of the 10-man team that won the National Rifle Team Trophy for the
Marine Corps. He earned his pilot’s wings in 1922 and flew for five
years before poor depth perception forced him back into the infantry.
In 1927, he received command of the Marine detachment on board the
_Denver_ (CL 16). He and his men soon became involved in the effort to
rid Nicaragua of Augusto Sandino. Edson spent 14 months ashore, most
of it deep in the interior of the country. In the process, he won
a reputation as an aggressive, savvy small-unit leader. He bested
Sandino’s forces in more than a dozen skirmishes, earned his first Navy
Cross for valor, and came away with the nickname “Red Mike” (in honor
of the colorful beard he sported in the field).
[Illustration]
Edson spent the first half of the 1930s as a tactics instructor at the
Basic School for new lieutenants, and then as ordnance officer at the
Philadelphia Depot of Supplies. During the summers he continued to
shoot; ultimately he captained the rifle team to consecutive national
championships in 1935 and 1936. In the summer of 1937 he transferred
to Shanghai to become the operations officer for the 4th Marines. He
arrived just in time for a ringside seat when the Sino-Japanese War
engulfed that city. That gave him ample opportunity to observe Japanese
combat techniques at close range. In June 1941, Red Mike assumed
command of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines at Quantico.
After his stint with the 1st Raiders and the 5th Marines on
Guadalcanal, Edson remained in the Pacific He served as chief of
staff of the 2d Marine Division at Tarawa, and as assistant division
commander on Saipan and Tinian. During each of these campaigns he
again distinguished himself under fire. Ultimately, the Marine Corps
discovered that Edson’s courage was matched by his skill as a staff
officer. He spent nine months as chief of staff for the Fleet Marine
Force Pacific and closed out the war in charge of the Service Command.
Following the war Edson headed the effort to preserve the Marine Corps
in the face of President Truman’s drive to “unify” the services. He
waged a fierce campaign in the halls of Congress, in the media, and
in public appearances across the nation. Finally, he resigned his
commission in order to testify publicly before committees of both
houses of Congress. His efforts played a key role in preserving the
Marine Corps. After stints as the Commissioner of Public Safety in
Vermont, and as Executive Director of the National Rifle Association,
Edson died in August 1955.
]
[Sidebar (page 3): Brigadier General Evans F. Carlson, USMC
Evans F. Carlson got an early start in his career as a maverick. He
ran away from his home in Vermont at the age of 14 and two years later
bluffed his way past the recruiters to enlist in the Army. When war
broke out in 1917, he already had five years of service under his belt.
Like Merritt A. Edson, he soon won a commission, but arrived at the
front too late to see combat. After the war he tried to make it as a
salesman, but gave that up in 1922 and enlisted in the Marine Corps. In
a few months he earned a commission again. Other than a failed attempt
at flight school, his first several years as a Marine lieutenant were
unremarkable.
In 1927 Carlson deployed to Shanghai with the 4th Marines. There he
became regimental intelligence officer and developed a deep interest in
China that would shape the remainder of his days. Three years later,
commanding an outpost of the _Guardia National_ in Nicaragua, he had
his first brush with guerrilla warfare. That became the second guiding
star of his career. In his only battle, he successfully engaged and
dispersed an enemy unit in a daring night attack. There followed a tour
with the Legation Guard in Peking, and a stint as executive officer
of the presidential guard detachment at Warm Springs, Georgia. In the
latter job Carlson came to know Franklin D. Roosevelt.
[Illustration]
Captain Carlson arrived in Shanghai for his third China tour in July
1937. Again like Edson, he watched the Japanese seize control of the
city. Detailed to duty as an observer, Carlson sought and received
permission to accompany the Chinese Communist Party’s 8th Route Army,
which was fighting against the Japanese. For the next year he divided
his time between the front lines and the temporary Chinese capital of
Hangkow. During that time he developed his ideas on guerrilla warfare
and ethical indoctrination. When a senior naval officer censured him
for granting newspaper interviews, Carlson returned to the States and
resigned so that he could speak out about the situation in China. He
believed passionately that the United States should do more to help the
Chinese in their war with Japan.
During the next two years Carlson spoke and wrote on the subject, to
include two books (_The Chinese Army_ and _Twin Stars of China_), and
made another trip to China. With war looming for the United States, he
sought to rejoin the Corps in April 1941. The Commandant granted his
request, made him a major in the reserves, and promptly brought him
onto active duty. Ten months later he created the 2d Raider Battalion.
After his departure from the raiders in 1943, Carlson served as
operations officer of the 4th Marine Division. He made the Tarawa
landing as an observer and participated with his division in the
assaults on Kwajalein and Saipan. In the latter battle he received
severe wounds in the arm and leg while trying to pull his wounded radio
operator out of the line of fire of an enemy machine gun. After the
war Carlson retired from the Marine Corps and made a brief run in the
1946 California Senate race before a heart attack forced him out of the
campaign. He died in May 1947.
]
[Sidebar (page 4): Destroyer Transports
The origins of the destroyer transports are relatively obscure. The
first mention of them came in the 1st Marine Brigade’s after action
report on Fleet Landing Exercise 3 (FLEX 3). Brigadier General James J.
Meade suggested in that February 1937 document that destroyers might
solve the dual problem of a shortage of amphibious transports and fire
support. With such ships “troops could move quickly close into shore
and disembark under protection of the ships’ guns.” The Navy apparently
agreed and decided to experiment with one of its flush-deck, four-stack
destroyers. It had built a large number of these during World War I and
most were now in mothballs.
In November 1938 the Navy reclassified _Manley_ (DD 74) as a
miscellaneous auxiliary (AG 28). After a few weeks of hasty work in the
New York Navy Yard, the ship served as a transport for Marine units in
the Caribbean. In the fall of 1939 _Manley_ went back into the yards
for a more extensive conversion. Workers removed all torpedo tubes,
one gun, two boilers, and their stacks. That created a hold amidships
for cargo and troops. The Chief of Naval Operations made it a rush
job so the ship would be available for FLEX 6 in early 1940. Company
A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, was the first unit to use the revamped
_Manley_. It used rubber boats to execute its 23 February 1940 assault
landing against Culebra in the Caribbean.
[Illustration]
Satisfied by the utility of the destroyer transport, the Navy
redesignated _Manley_ yet again, this time as the lead ship of a new
class, APD-1. The APD designation denoted a highspeed transport. By the
end of 1940 the Navy yards had reactivated five of _Manley_’s sister
ships and converted them in the same fashion. In its haste, the Navy
had left out any semblance of amenities for embarked Marines. When
Lieutenant Colonel Edson took his battalion on board the APD squadron
in the summer of 1941, each troop compartment was nothing more than an
empty space--no ventilation, no bunks, and just four washbasins for
130 men. It took a high-level investigation, launched by one Marine’s
letter to his congressman, to get the billeting spaces upgraded.
These original six APDs would be the only ones available until the
Navy rushed to complete more in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. As the
two raider battalions moved out into the Pacific, so did the APDs. All
six ships saw service in the Solomons campaign, but only _Manley_ and
_Stringham_ (APD 6) survived. Japanese bombers sank _Colhoun_ (APD 2)
on 30 August 1942, just after it had transferred a company of the 1st
Raiders from Tulagi to Guadalcanal. Enemy destroyers sank _Gregory_
(APD 3) and _Little_ (APD 4) in the early morning hours of 5 September
1942 after the two transports had participated with the 1st Raiders in
a reconnaissance of Savo Island. A torpedo bomber ended the existence
of _McKean_ (APD 5) on 17 November 1943 as she ferried troops to
Bougainville. Before the war was over, the Navy would convert another
133 destroyers and destroyer escorts to the transport role.
]
_Shaping the Raiders_
The raider battalions soon received first priority in the Marine Corps
on men and equipment. Edson and Carlson combed the ranks of their
respective divisions and also siphoned off many of the best men pouring
forth from the recruit depots. They had no difficulty attracting
volunteers with the promise that they would be the first to fight the
Japanese. Carlson’s exactions were much greater than those required to
fill out Edson’s battalion, but both generated resentment from fellow
officers struggling to flesh out the rapidly expanding divisions on
a meager skeleton of experienced men. The raiders also had _carte
blanche_ to obtain any equipment they deemed necessary, whether or not
it was standard issue anywhere else in the Corps.
Carlson and Roosevelt soon broke the shackles that Holcomb had
attempted to impose on them. They rejected most of the men whom Edson
sent them, and they adjusted the organization of their battalion
to suit their purposes. They also inculcated the unit with an
unconventional military philosophy that was an admixture of Chinese
culture, Communist egalitarianism, and New England town hall democracy.
Every man would have the right to say what he thought, and their battle
cry would be “Gung Ho!”--Chinese for “work together.” Officers would
have no greater privileges than the men, and would lead by consensus
rather than rank. There also would be “ethical indoctrination,” which
Carlson described as “giv[ing] conviction through persuasion.” That
process supposedly ensured that each man knew what he was fighting for
and why.
The 2d Raiders set up their pup tents at Jacques Farm in the hills of
Camp Elliot, where they remained largely segregated from civilization.
Carlson rarely granted liberty, and sometimes held musters in the
middle of the night to catch anyone who slipped away for an evening
on the town. He even tried to convince men to forego leave for family
emergencies, though he did not altogether prohibit it.
Training focused heavily on weapons practice, hand-to-hand fighting,
demolitions, and physical conditioning, to include an emphasis on long
hikes. As the men grew tougher and acquired field skills, the focus
shifted to more night work. Carlson also implemented an important
change to the raider organization promulgated from Washington. Instead
of a unitary eight-man squad, he created a 10-man unit composed of a
squad leader and three fire teams of three men each. Each fire team
boasted a Thompson submachine gun, a Browning automatic rifle (BAR),
and one of the new Garand M-1 semiautomatic rifles. To keep manpower
within the constraints of the carrying capacity of an APD, each rifle
company had just two rifle platoons and a weapons platoon. Carlson’s
system of organization and training was designed to create a force
suited “for infiltration and the attainment of objectives by unorthodox
and unexpected methods.” He and Roosevelt were developing the guerrilla
unit they had envisioned.
Edson’s battalion retained the table of organization he had designed.
It was based on an eight-man squad, with a leader, two BAR men, four
riflemen armed with the M-1903 Springfield bolt-operated rifle, and
a sniper carrying a Springfield mounting a telescopic sight. (Later
in the war he would champion the four-man fire team that became the
standard for all Marine infantry.) With smaller squads, his companies
contained three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon. His weapons
company provided additional light machine guns and 60mm mortars.
(The 81mm mortar platoon, added to the headquarters company by the
Commandant, would not deploy overseas with the battalion.)
Training was similar to that in the 2d Raiders, except for more rubber
boat work due to the convenient location of Quantico on the Potomac
River. The 1st Raiders also strove to reach a pace of seven miles per
hour on hikes, more than twice the normal speed of infantry. They
did so by alternating periods of double-timing with fast walking.
Although Red Mike emphasized light infantry tactics, his men were not
guerrillas. Instead, they formed a highly trained battalion prepared
for special operations as well as more conventional employment.
Edson’s style of leadership contrasted starkly with that of his
counterpart. He encouraged initiative in his subordinates, but rank
carried both responsibility and authority for decision-making. He was
a quiet man who impressed his troops with his ability on the march and
on the firing ranges, not with speeches. His raiders received regular
liberty, and he even organized battalion dances attended by busloads of
secretaries from nearby Washington.
The two raider battalions bore the same name, but they could hardly
have been more dissimilar. What they did have in common was excellent
training and a desire to excel in battle.
_Getting to the Fight_
It did not take long for the raiders to move toward the sound of the
guns. In early April 1942 the majority of the 1st Raiders boarded
trains and headed for the West Coast, where they embarked in the
_Zeilin_. They arrived in Samoa near the end of the month and joined
the Marine brigades garrisoning that outpost. Company D, the 81mm
mortar platoon, and a representative slice of the headquarters and
weapons companies remained behind in Quantico. This rear echelon
was under the command of Major Samuel B. Griffith II, the battalion
executive officer. (He had recently joined the raiders after spending
several months in England observing the British commandos.) This small
force maintained some raider capability on the East Coast, and also
constituted a nucleus for a projected third raider battalion.
The 2d Raiders spent the month of April on board ship learning rubber
boat techniques. The Navy had transferred three of its APDs to the West
Coast, and Carlson’s men used them to conduct practice landings on San
Clemente Island. In May the 2d Raiders embarked and sailed for Hawaii,
arriving at Pearl Harbor on 17 May.
[Illustration: