MISSION
RAISE HELL: The U.S. Marines on Choiseul, October-November 1943, by
James F. Christ. 257 pages, illustrated. Naval Institute.
James
Christ's “Mission Raise Hell” is one of the more interesting
small unit battle histories I have read.
As
a diversion before the invasion of Bougainville, the Marines sent in
the Second Parachute Battalion to a beach within about 10 miles of
the principal Japanese base on Choiseul. One thing Christ does not
make clear is why the Japanese fell for the diversion.
After
fighting tenaciously for over a year for Guadalcanal, you'd have
thought the Japanese would have figured out that the real military
value of a Solomon island was space for an airfield, or secondarily,
a naval base. Choiseul had neither.
Nor
did Bougainville, really, but Choiseul was even less attractive
militarily.
The
Second was told not to expect any help, as the South Pacific Command
was still shorthanded. They got a few sorties by aircraft and the
backing of a couple of PT boats (one skippered by Jack Kennedy), but
the 650 Marines were left to themselves on an island with about 5,000
Japanese marines – elite troops whose large stature surprised the
Americans.
It
was not as suicidal as it sounds. Moving forces around on Choiseul
was not easy, and in their week ashore, the Marines fought only two
actions, apart from patrolling clashes, both small.
The
excellence of “Mission Raise Hell” arises from Chist's years of
interviews with all the surviving Marines in the late '90s, just over
10% of the assault force. Of the survivors, almost every one had been
wounded in the battalion's other major action, Iwo Jima, so it was
somewhat remarkable that so many men were still available by 1998,
including the commander, Lt. Col. Victor “Brute” Krulak, a legend
among Pacific Marines.
By
sticking only to what each informant told him about his week, Christ
gives an excellent feel for what it felt like. And since it was a
small action, he had informants covering all the important sectors of
the operation.
He
supplemented memories with the war diary and other written sources,
but notes that the eyewitness testimony at the center of his history
is ambiguous. Some men recalled their week as dry, others as
incessantly wet.
Christ
leaves such ambiguities alone, but it seems obvious that the days and
the coasts were dry and the nights and slopes were wet (just as we
experience on the high subtropical island of Maui where I live). A
Marine's memory, after 50 years, seems to reflect whether his
assignments took him to the coast in daylight or kept him at the
hideout in the mountains at night.
A
lot of what the Marines recalled was not combat but jokes and
idiosyncrasies of their fellows. And their fondness for the Johnson
semiautomatic rifle and Johnson light machine gun.
As
elite troops, the paramarines were equipped with the inventions of
Melvin Johnson, and they much preferred them to standard models. The
Johnsons were light and did not jam.
But
few were made.
Christ
also notes that the paramarines commanded the most firepower, per
squad, of any army in the world at the time, another reason they were
bold enough to go against 10 to 1 odds.
This
is not strictly accurate. Some Red Army units were equipped entirely
with submachine guns, but the Marines did have an advantage.
Their
real advantage, though, was that they were on the tactical defensive,
even if on a strategic offensive. Krulak was ordered to make a
commotion but avoid pitched battles.
Thus
the Marines went looking for trouble but as soon as they found it,
they took defensive positions. Since the defense, with automatic
weapons, is usually reckoned as three times as effective as the
offense, that went a long way toward ensuring that the Marines
escaped with few losses – 14 dead, the same number they had
suffered a little before in a few seconds during a Japanese air raid
on Vella La Vella.
At
Iwo Jima, when the Japanese were on the defensive, the Marines
suffered about 120% casualties.
No comments:
Post a Comment