This time of year, a lot of my reading drifts back to the Pacific. Eighty-four years ago this coming week, on November 4, 1942, two companies of the 2d Marine Raider Battalion came ashore at Aola Bay on the northeast coast of Guadalcanal. Two days later they walked into the jungle on what Marines still call “the Long Patrol.” I'm Ryan Gunning, and as the Marine Corps' 251st birthday gets closer, this is one of the stories I keep coming back to.
A month behind the lines
The Raiders were led by Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson. According to the Marine Corps history of the Raiders, they had landed to secure a beachhead for a planned airfield, but the swampy ground at Aola turned out to be no place for one. On November 5, Major General Alexander Vandegrift sent Carlson new orders by airdrop: march west and hit a large Japanese force from the rear as it tried to slip out of an encirclement near the Metapona River.
They set out on November 6 with a coastwatcher and island scouts as guides, among them Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza, already a hero of the campaign. For the next month, Carlson's companies fanned out in small patrols, fought more than a dozen actions, and covered roughly 150 miles of jungle and ridgeline. Resupply came mostly by Higgins boat to the coast and then on the backs of local porters. The food was tea, rice, raisins and bacon, with the occasional chocolate bar.
On November 30, a squad led by Corporal John Yancey surprised a Japanese bivouac of about 100 men. Yancey rushed in firing and the squad followed. Carlson called it “the most spectacular of any of our engagements,” and Yancey earned the first of his two Navy Crosses. Along the way they also tracked down and disabled a Japanese mountain gun, part of their orders to hunt the artillery harassing Henderson Field.
The cost nobody counted at first
By the time they walked back into the Marine lines on December 4, the official history credits the battalion with 488 enemy killed, at a cost of 16 Raiders killed and 18 wounded. But those numbers hide the real price. The battalion evacuated 225 men for malaria, dysentery and jungle rot. Two companies that started with 133 men each came back with 57 between them. General Vandegrift still cited the Raiders for their “training, stamina and fortitude” and their “high morale.”
Where “Gung Ho” comes from
Carlson gave the Corps a phrase we still use. He borrowed “Gung Ho” from the slogan of the Chinese industrial cooperatives he had seen while serving in China, and he told his Marines it meant “work together.” A September 1942 press release called it the Raiders' battle cry. NPR notes the literal Chinese doesn't quite mean that, but Carlson's version is the one that stuck. Today most people use it to mean “enthusiastic.” On the Long Patrol it meant something simpler: nobody gets through the jungle alone. Even on the last push, Carlson held a “Gung Ho” meeting to rally his worn-out men for one more climb.
My two cents
I never patrolled a jungle like Guadalcanal, but I know what it means to be tired, far from home, and depending on the Marine next to you. What strikes me about the Long Patrol isn't just the fighting. It's the scouts who led the way, the porters who carried the rice, and a commander who kept telling his Marines they were in it together. That's the part that travels well past 1942.
It's also why I started The Calm Seas Project. A lot of veterans leave the service and lose the team that got them through. Work together isn't a bad motto for civilian life either.
So this November, before the cake and the birthday ball, take a minute to read about the Raiders. And if there's someone you served with who carried more than their share, call them. Gung Ho, and Semper Fi.
Sources: Maj. Jon T. Hoffman, USMCR, From Makin to Bougainville: Marine Raiders in the Pacific War (Marine Corps Historical Center), “The Long Patrol” · USMC Historical Monograph: The Guadalcanal Campaign · Naval History Magazine: The Marines' Commando Experiment · U.S. Navy: Makin Island Embodies the “Gung Ho” Spirit of its Namesake · Press release, September 6, 1942: “Carlson's Raiders” Have Battle-Cry · NPR Code Switch: The Long, Strange Journey of “Gung Ho”
