“You figure the Japs will be in that mill?”
“I’d make it my CP if I were on the other side. That will probably be one tough nut to crack, but if you move your battalion to the west, you can take it under fire from that side of the river, and then my boys can assault it directly from the east—assuming we can get over there. Hell, we’ll swim over if we have to, but this map seems to indicate a ford here, and there’s another small bridge we can use here.”
“Alright,” said Carlson. “My men will be in position. You just give the word.”
“Good enough, but if things get hot, don’t go writing notes to Tojo about surrendering. We fight this thing out to the last man.”
“You stow that shit Edson, or I’ll ram it down your throat!”
Carlson didn’t appreciate the remark. Nimitz had used the Raiders for a quick hit and run against Makin Islands in August, and Carlson had deployed from a couple submarines to hit the island and bust up enemy supplies. They wrecked over 750 barrels of aviation fuel, the radio station, and looted the food stocks. The Japanese garrison had been surprised, but sometime later, twelve seaplanes arrived overhead, along with a few fighters. Carlson figured they were bringing in reinforcements, and decided his men had done their job. He gave the order to withdraw that night, but the surf was so high that the men exhausted themselves trying to get out past the reefs to reach the subs, with several boats swamped, taking a lot of their weapons down with them.
Seventy men were forced to turn back, tired, wet, and with a good amount of their ammo already expended, and very few weapons. They managed to take out a pair of those seaplanes using their elephant gun, the Boys AT rifle, but there were ten more circling overhead, some coming in for a landing. Carlson hit what he later called a ‘spiritual low’ that night, and gathered his officers about him to discuss their options. They could hold with what they had, try to hide on the far end of the atoll, or surrender.
“That’s a bunch of malarkey! I never wrote any such note,” said Carlson. “I left it up to the men, and yes, we sent a man out to see if they could find someone to see what we were up against. If they had more than we could handle, surrender was an option, but he had no such orders. He was to come back and leave it to the rest of us as to what we wanted to do.”
“You don’t cut cards with the enemy,” said Edson. “If you lost your rifles, you damn well still had your knives.”
“There was more to it than that,” said Carlson, irritated to be questioned by a fellow officer like this. “Hell, I had the President’s son with me on that island. I had his life to consider.”
“Oh, that would have been real swell,” said Edson. “The Japanese with Roosevelt’s son, and all because you couldn’t manage your rubber boats.”
“Look, I’m not discussing this crap with you,” Carlson said bitterly. “You just make sure your battalion doesn’t get lost when you swing right for that ford.” He leveled a finger right at Edson’s nose. “My men will be doing the heavy lifting. We go round that west flank alone, and we won’t have the 2nd Marines behind us like you will. So when we get in position, you better damn well be ready to hit that airfield and sugar mill.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Edson, thinking he probably shouldn’t have stuck it to Carlson over that flub on Makin. But he said nothing more about it, nor did he apologize.
It was later found that the raid had all but eliminated the entire Japanese garrison on the island, and that those seaplanes had turned back, at least that day. There were only 17 Japanese left on the island, though they would have undoubtedly returned the following day. In effect, Carlson and his men had no one to surrender to. Thankfully, the surf quieted a bit, and they were able to use the remaining boats to fashion a large floating raft and make it out to the subs near the lagoon.
The raid had been a real morale booster back home, and a movie called “Gung Ho” was made about it in 1943, omitting any trouble with the heavy surf, and anything about the officer’s parley to discuss possible surrender. Nothing was said about the message Carlson sent out, which actually reached the hands of a Japanese soldier. While returning to his commander, he was cut down by a fire team on the perimeter who didn’t know about the plan.
Nor did it say anything about the nine men who were left behind in those last hectic hours, never finding a boat. Amazingly, they managed to evade capture for 30 days on the tiny island until they were eventually caught and sent to the area HQ at Kwajalein Island, where local commander, Vice Admiral Koso Abe, had them beheaded on 16 October, 1942. He would later be hung for that war crime on the island of Guam, five years later.
Instead of closing with these uncomfortable events, the movie, obviously intended as a morale boosting propaganda film, ended with a stirring speech made by Randolph Scott, the actor who played Carlson, who was renamed ‘Colonel Thorwald’ in the movie. He depicted the event as the first bold counterpunch against Japan, much like the Doolittle Raid. The real consequence, however, was to convince the Japanese that they should strengthen their light garrisons in the Marshalls and Gilberts, a decision that promised to make any subsequent raids a living hell in those islands, one of which was named Tarawa….
In spite of the mishaps, Nimitz was convinced of the virtue these Raider Battalions offered the Navy, so much so that he wanted to pull them out for the raid into the New Hebrides when 1st Marine Division was relieved. Krueger convinced him that they would be better employed in the highlands on Fiji, because he planned to use the entire Marine contingent left behind, minus the tank battalions, to operate in the mountains to fill the gap between the two Army divisions posted on the North and South coasts. They would not only screen that area from Japanese incursion, but also probe forward aggressively along any mountain track they could take to try and outflank the main defensive position of the enemy. And they could try and take the field at M’ba while they were at it.
Edson and Carlson were just the perfect force to lead the way. Since artillery could not be taken on such a trek, the Marine Defense Battalions deployed near Suva contributed some additional mortars which were rolled into an ad hoc heavy weapons battalion, with one company distributed to each of the three Marine battalions. Carlson’s 2nd Raider Battalion led the way, followed closely by Edson’s 1st Battalion. Behind them came the entire 2nd Marine Regiment, the real muscle for this attack. They would have no artillery, aside from those 81mm mortars for support fire, but they would bring three more good battalions to the fight.
By the 7th of January, as Patch was slugging it out with the 48th Division for Momi, the Marines were in position. Carlson had swung along the skirts of the wooded high ground west of M’ba, and was very close to a small village labeled Solo on his map. He radioed in that the Japs looked like they had thrown up a small foot bridge there, and it was right near the airfield. He could see Jap planes taking off from his position, no more than four klicks west of the field.
By this time, Edson had scouted the way forward to the river, and Colonel Shoup had all three battalions ready to make his attack to secure any crossing point they could force. II Battalion would hit the ford on the left under Lieutenant Herb Amey. The engineers brought up enough light rafts to get Major John Schoettel’s III Battalion over the river in the center, and Major Wood Kyle was on the right, where the Nasiva creek was the only obstacle, which could be forded on foot. From there a good road would lead right to the airfield, and M’ba beyond, so it was no surprise that ‘Woody,’ as the men called him, ran into a full Jap battalion when they tried to cross.
The Japanese machineguns started rattling as the Raiders fanned out, their teams deploying to lay down suppressive fire. The action they were now beginning would decide the fate of the 38th Division at Tavua, and the terrible battle there for Hill 1000.