NARRATOR: In a war that
seems certain to be lost, they brought America
hope for victory. Across thousands of
miles of Pacific Ocean and dozens of jungle
islands occupied by an unrelenting enemy,
they fought to the death. Their story is one of uncommon
valor, a near mythic legend paid for with bravado,
bayonets, and blood. Marine Raiders next on
"Dangerous Missions." [theme music] To hear their stories is
to know the hell of war. To remember how they
died is a solemn reminder of sacrifices made in the
name of flag and country. In the space of
about 30 seconds, we lost the first three
fatalities in the Guadalcanal operation. Bayonet wound left side,
abdomen and lower chest, shrapnel wound in both legs,
gunshot wound in the left leg. When we came
through their lines, they actually looked at us as
though they were seeing ghosts. NARRATOR: For two ferocious
years from 1942 until 1944, a few thousand
hand-picked, lightly armed Marines cut a
swath of destruction on Pacific Islands
behind enemy lines, across some of the most
brutal killing fields ever seen in war. They are considered the
first special forces unit in the history of the
United States military, highly trained commandos whose
mission was to strike quickly, effectively, and get out. They were the Marine Raiders. WILLIAM LANSFORD: We were able
to kill literally hundreds of Japanese and lose only,
you know, a fraction of that in raiders. HOWARD STIDHAM: We were
walking down a trail, you know, going through this-- another outfit, and some little
kid would look up and say, hey, what outfit? You know, second raiders. And you could almost see
that eyes got bigger, and his mouth gaped open. He was a little bit
awed by it, I guess. We walked a little taller. NARRATOR: The names of their
remarkable campaigns, which turned back the onslaught by
the imperial army of Japan and the Pacific, are etched in
the lexicon of modern warfare-- Makin Island, New Georgia,
Guadalcanal, Bougainville. Their battle cry, gung-ho,
a Chinese term meaning work together, has become synonymous
with the ability of a Marine's fighting spirit to overcome
seemingly insurmountable odds. One thing that they
have in common is they-- these weren't people
who wanted to be in the rear with the beer. These are guys who
wanted to see action. They wanted to fight. NARRATOR: Their
tale is seldom told, and many of the
images in this program have rarely been broadcast. Those pictures and films
combined with History Channel reenactments will bring to
life the story of the Marine Raiders. History remembers the
four Raider battalions as extremely efficient fighting
tools in an island war that was spinning out of control. But the genesis of the Marine
Raiders did not come easy. Many regular Marine
leaders at the time felt there was no need
for a specialized unit, that the GIs themselves
could handle even the most treacherous
amphibious assaults. But in the dark days following
Japan's near annihilation of the US Navy's
fleet in Pearl Harbor, the American public
needed a victory. The nation's morale was low. Japanese forces were moving
at will across the islands of the Pacific. In Europe, Nazi troops had
pushed the British army off the continent,
and Hitler's Germany controlled lands stretching
from the English Channel to Eastern Europe. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt turned to England for ideas. The president
wanted to know what had helped the British
people bravely face even the most hopeless of times. The answer was the
British Commandos. ELLEN GUILLEMETTE: In
essence, the Raiders were the Marine Corps' version
of the British Commandos. Back when the Raiders
were being formed, American morale was
at a very low point. And FDR met with Churchill,
and Churchill had kind of done a morale boost for the British. And FDR kind of liked that idea. NARRATOR: Two people were
instrumental in pushing Roosevelt toward forming an
American version of the British Commandos. One was his son, Jimmy,
a Marine himself, who believed that a Commando
fighting force would be effective in the South Pacific. The other was an old
friend of the president's. He was a veteran officer who
had fought with the Marines in Nicaragua and spent
much of the 1930s in China, where he studied
that country's commando forces. He would go on to become one
of the Raiders' most enduring legends. His name was Evans F. Carlson. EVANS CARLSON: And they said,
[inaudible] to this day, I marvel at it because
they were so rigid. He had considered the ethical
implications of everything that he did. ELLEN GUILLEMETTE: He felt that
guerrilla warfare units could be filled with an esprit de
corps and esprit de mission that would make them want
to give more than even a regular unit could do. NARRATOR: With the
permission of the president, Carlson and Marine commander
Merritt A. Edson, a veteran of the Banana Wars in Central
America during the 1920s, began to recruit volunteers. Edson headed the first Raider
battalion at the marine base in Quantico, Virginia. Carlson's second battalion
trained at Camp Elliott in San Diego, California. Both men made it clear
to potential recruits that the Raiders would
be a breed apart. The Marine Raiders
were all volunteers, and you might say they were
volunteers for the second time because at that time, the Marine
Corps was not taking draftees. You had to volunteer
for the Marine Corps. Then you had to volunteer
for the Raiders. CARL PETTIT: They were first
in, last out outfit, supposedly. That was one of the
things that intrigued me was the fact that we could
get into the war quicker. NARRATOR: But just
being physically fit and willing to
fight did not guarantee being assigned to the Raiders. They were grilled, actually,
on a number of sort of pop quiz type questions, and one
of the pop questions was, how would you feel about
killing a Jap with a knife? If you recoiled at the
thought of that, well, then, you weren't for them. NARRATOR: William Lansford
was a young Marine who heard about the Raider
recruitment and wanted in. Refused permission by
his commanding officer to volunteer, he snuck
away from his unit to try and get an interview
with Evans Carlson. WILLIAM LANSFORD: He was sitting
there on a little crappy table, and he's writing
something in a notebook. He said, what can I do for you? I said, I want to
join the Raiders. And then he began asking
me questions, you know. Would you cut your
buddy's throat if he was panicking behind
the lines and stuff like that. It was fairly
melodramatic stuff. And I answered what I
thought he wanted to hear. NARRATOR: The next day,
Lansford became a Raider. His three months
of training went far beyond what the Marines
had put soldiers through-- advanced weapons practice,
hand-to-hand fighting, demolitions, and intense
physical training. Though these men were already
hardened by basic training in the Marine Corps,
training to become a Raider was designed to
hone their bodies, as well as jungle fighting
skills foreign to most American soldiers. The Raiders were trained to
use rubber boats to give them the ability to quickly and
quietly reach island targets. JOHN MCCARTHY: And the Raiders
were essentially formed as shock troops just to really
throw an enemy in disarray. And they were never trained
to fight a defensive fight. It was always hit hard quick and
get out there as fast as they could and cause as much
damage as they could, which they did very well. HOWARD STIDHAM: We learned a
lot about living off the land. And we could exist for a
while with a sock full of rice and a piece of salt pork. You know, you'd be surprised
how many meals you can get out of a sock full of rice. NARRATOR: By the spring of
1942, the first Raider units were ready to leave the
safety of the United States for the dangerous waters
of the South Pacific. The pressure on them to
succeed was tremendous. Most of the US
military might was focused at the war in Europe. In the Pacific, Japanese
troops were encountering little or no resistance as they
moved from island to island on a vicious expansion eastward. America badly needed a victory. It was up to the Raiders
to give them one. By the summer of 1942, Marines
and the Marine First and Second Raider battalions had made
their way to the South Pacific. Made up of 800 men
each, the battalion set up training posts
in Hawaii and Samoa. Often on these islands,
more regular Marines volunteered to become Raiders. GEROGE MACRAE: They were eating
Australian mutton [inaudible] in this camp as a
replacement unit. And a young lieutenant came
down from the rear camp and asked if anybody
wanted to volunteer. And I dropped a piece of
meat from my mess gear on the ground. The camp dog wouldn't eat it. And this lieutenant said we're
having steak at the Raider camp, and I was about the
third one at the coconut tree to sign up. That's how I became a Raider. NARRATOR: It was
from these islands that the Marines would stage
their assaults across the South Pacific. And it was on these islands
that the Raiders prepared for Commando raids into the
unforgiving jungle strongholds held by the Japanese. Though the two Raider
battalions trained for similar assignments,
hit-and-run Commando style missions, their leaders could
not have been more different. Merritt Edson, commander of
the First Raider battalion, was a by-the-book Marine. A decorated war hero who would
come of age fighting in Central America, he believed in
protocol, proper decorum, and a strict adherence
to Marine procedure. JOHN MCCARTHY: Edson incidently
was a tremendous weapons expert. And he was captain of the
Marine Rifle and Fiscal Team, which was no small deed at
that time and at any time. And he was just an all-around
outstanding officer, and his men would
do anything for him. NARRATOR: The leader of the
Raiders' second battalion, Evans Fordyce Carlson, also
a veteran of World War I, was different. He was an individualist. Some called him a Mustang. He believed that if
the Raiders were going to do extraordinary jobs,
then they should be treated differently than other Marines. Some saw his men as more
rebels than Marines. Carlson's Raiders, as they
would come to be known, often grew their hair
long and had beards. We got there, and
there was a couple of guys with rubber boats
and a lot of Jap equipment. And they're all wearing
these big knives. And they all looked-- didn't look like Marines. They looked like
tramps and beards, long hair, and so forth. NARRATOR: Carlson employed
tactics he learned in China and Nicaragua. He imported from China the
phrase "gung-ho," which, translated, meant work together. It was a term that would
be forever associated with the Raiders. WILLIAM LANSFORD: Carlson
trained us so well in my view, and in the view of others,
too, that, actually, far from being a
suicide outfit, we were so well trained that I
think we had fewer casualties than the average Marine unit
that I think the enemy is the one that had the big
casualties when we met, not us. And I'm not boasting. NARRATOR: During the months
of arduous jungle training and later in the hell of battle,
Carlson held gung-ho meetings, where operational plans and
objectives were discussed, and every man in the Raider
unit could speak his mind, regardless of rank. JOHN MCCARTHY: The troops
could speak their minds about anything and not
really have any yield about it or fear of reprisal. And it was a system that
Carlson instilled in them. And his troops just loved him. They would have followed
him right over the edge. EVANS CARLSON: The
well-being of his people always came ahead of
his personal feelings, personal desires, or personal
situation, all of this here. NARRATOR: Carlson
knew that passion would be needed when his Raiders
stepped into the line of fire. Carlson also developed
what, at the time, was an unorthodox approach
to jungle warfare. The regular Marines used
an eight-man formation when going into battle. Carlson used a 10-man team-- one squad leader and three
fire teams of three men each. Each fire team had a Thompson
submachine gun, a Browning automatic rifle, and
one of the new grand M1 semiautomatic rifles. EVANS CARLSON: Well, he
thought that the serious need for an organization like this
that was capable of operating independently and was heavily
equipped with weapons so that the firepower was three
or four times as great as one might expect from a
battalion in similar size in a line regiment. In a three-man unit, you can
see what the possibilities for firefighting was-- enormous. NARRATOR: Carlson's son,
who was also a Marine, wanted to follow his father
into battle with the Raiders. But the senior Carlson
at first wanted nothing to do with his son
being beside him in war. EVANS CARLSON: I mentioned to
my father a number of times formally and informally and
verbally and in writing, of my desire to be a
member of his outfit. And he said, go away,
don't bother me-- or words to that effect. NARRATOR: The younger
Carlson got into the Raiders with the help of the president's
son, Jimmy Roosevelt, who would go on to command the
Fourth Raiders battalion. Carlson loved photography,
and many of the pictures seen in this program were taken
by him or by the battalion's photographer. Many of the images have
never before been seen. Though Carlson became symbolic
with the romance of the Pacific War, it was Edson and his First
Raiders battalion that first saw action against the Japanese. It happened on August 7, 1942,
on a small strategic piece of land located in the
lower Solomon Islands called Tulage, home to a
Japanese seaplane base. JOHN SWEENEY: Tulage was known
to be the hardest nut to crack as far as coming in because
they had several hundred of what they called special
landing force people that we would call
Japanese Marines. They were well-trained and very
bitter fighters to the end. NARRATOR: Tulage was small, only
4,000 yards long and no more than 1,000 yards wide. When the Raiders
arrived, small skirmishes turned into major assaults. The 872 invading Raiders
found the only way to flush out the Japanese
is to use explosives. That night, the Japanese
countered with a classic banzai bayonet attack. The enemy came within 50 yards
of the Raider command post, but Edson's Raiders held on
and ferociously fought back. By 3:00 PM the
following day, Edson declared the island secure. The Raiders suffered losses
of 38 dead and 55 wounded. All but three of the 350
Japanese defenders were killed. The Raiders proved themselves as
capable fighters the first time in combat. But they would soon
find out that victory against the Japanese would
not always come easy, and sometimes, not at all. In August 1942,
Marine Raider units were mobilized in the South
Pacific to make a statement. The United States
public wanted heroes, and government officials
believed the Raiders were their best shot. Nobody understood at
that time just how hungry the American public was
for some good war news. NARRATOR: The Second
Raiders battalion, known for their commander
as Carlson's Raiders, prepared to strike Makin Island,
an atoll in the Gilbert Islands chain. Besides Carlson, the men were
under the command of a lanky, quiet, and
well-mannered officer-- not necessarily the image
of a fighting machine. But he came with
the right pedigree. He was Jimmy Roosevelt,
son of the president, one of the people responsible
for the Raiders being formed in the first place. WILLIAM LANSFORD: When
Roosevelt was first commissioned a captain,
everybody made fun of him, you know. And the other FDR sons, you
know, they had bumper stickers. I want to be a captain
to daddy, and all that. But he was not only a very
intelligent man and a very compassionate man, but he
was a terrific soldier, as it turned out. NARRATOR: The planned
raid on Makin Island would be more a decoy than
an assault. In reality, the Marines were
already on Guadalcanal. The Japanese could be fooled
into thinking another invasion would take place in the
Gilbert Islands near Makin if the Raiders attacked there. The Raider plan was bold. Two companies from the
Raiders Second Battalion boarded two mine
laying submarines-- the Nautlius and the Argonaut. Under the command of Evans
Carlson and Jimmy Roosevelt, the men set sail for six days. JOHN MCCARTHY: They sent
222 officers and men aboard those two submarines
for this lightning strike raid on Makin Atoll to
kill the enemy, destroy all their provisions, their avgas,
their radio station, the sea planes, anything they had. NARRATOR: Under the
cloak of darkness, the Raiders quietly launched
their attack on Makin Island on August 17, 1942. The plan was to come
ashore in rubber boats at two separate
points on the island. But due to poor
weather conditions, the plan was scrapped. The boats all wound
up at the same place. Things got worse. The Japanese were unaware
of the Raiders' arrival, until one of the Raiders
accidentally discharged his weapon. The element of
surprise was over. The battle for Makin was on. ROBERT BUERLEIN: There you have
the Makin Island raid, which was as colorful a raid as even
the Hollywood could envision, with submarines and
rubber boats at night, and breaching the surf
and the half firepower. NARRATOR: During the first
few minutes of the firefight, Sergeant Clyde Thomason
died while directing the fire of his platoon. He was later awarded
the Medal of Honor, the first enlisted Marine so
decorated in World War II. The Japanese launched a
series of banzai attacks. HOWARD STIDHAM:
I moved in there, and there was this
machine gun set up. And both the gunners were dead,
and my curiosity got the better of my better judgment, I guess. And I got on my knees. I was looking one of them over. And just about that time,
he raises up on his knees. So I fortunately had a
knife in my [inaudible].. I whipped this out and
surgically installed him a new air passage
into his lungs. NARRATOR: The fight appeared
to go badly for the Raiders. Carlson ordered a withdrawal
back to the rubber boats, but high surf prevented
many of the men from getting more than
50 yards off shore. The faulty outboard
engines, which Carlson had wanted replaced, swamped. Boats overturned and
equipment disappeared. Some of the Raiders drowned. Our Raiders died on Makin
Island that should have died had nothing to do with Carlson. It had to do with
the damn motors that they had on
those rubber boats. And Carlson had complained
for months that when you got into a high surf, that
these motors tended to swamp. And he said if they
swamp at the wrong time when we're loaded down
with gear and everything, he said the men have
to paddle out of there. NARRATOR: Because
of the rough surf, the men were forced
back to the island. The following day,
concerned there was still overwhelming numbers of
Japanese soldiers in the jungles of Makin, many of
the Raiders felt they had reached a spiritual low. Carlson sent two scouts
into the jungle to patrol. They returned an hour
later with remarkable news. It turned out that the Raiders
had been much more successful than they thought. They had killed most
of the Japanese. The ones who survived had fled. Carlson ordered the 18 Raiders
killed on Makin to be buried. He then sent the rest of
his men into the boats, and they paddled to the safety
of the waiting submarines. What the Raiders
didn't realize was that in the confusion of
battle, nine Raiders had become separated from the group and
were lost somewhere on Makin, or in one of the
surrounding atolls. JOHN MCCARTHY: They didn't
realize until they got back to Hawaii that these nine
guys were left on the island. And Carlson said to
me, he said, if I'd have known there was
one man who left, he said, I wouldn't have
gone back to the submarine. I would have stayed with him. NARRATOR: The nine left on Makin
were taken to Kwajalein Island and beheaded. When the two submarines
carrying the Raiders sailed into Pearl Harbor,
the men on board were amazed. HOWARD STIDHAM: We were
surprised as we're going down Battleship Row there, the
Navy had all their crews aft, and the band was playing
on the Marine helm. And up ahead on the pier
was a big green honor guard, present arms, and there was
all the Navy brass in Honolulu. So we began to realize that good
God, we're a bunch of heroes. NARRATOR: Though Carlson was
deeply disturbed by what he considered an unnecessary loss
of American lives on Makin, especially because of
the poor performance of the outboard motors
on the rubber boats, the public thought otherwise. The Raiders had soundly beaten
the Japanese in the Pacific. In an interview
given during the war, Carlson focused on the
bravery of his men in battle. MAN: Our casualties were
very light by comparison with the enemy. They were light because the
Raiders worked together, cooperating fully. Each man, an officer
knowing his part of a job and doing it with the
unspoken assurance that his comrades would be
where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed
to be, and doing what they were supposed to do. NARRATOR: The next ordeal
was just weeks away. It would test the mettle of
even seasoned combat veterans. The Raiders were about to be
thrust into the most hellish series of battles
they would ever face, the violent firefights
for control of an island known as Guadalcanal. During August
1942, the stage was set for one of the fiercest
battles of World War II. It would come on
a lonely island, a seemingly insignificant piece
of land called Guadalcanal. It was here that the Marines
and the Marine Raiders made a stand to protect a
pockmarked dirt landing strip. It was a symbol of hope. It was the Marines' connection
to the outside world. It was called Henderson Field. ELLEN GUILLEMETTE: If the
Japanese controlled it, it could make
Americans' attempts to recapture all those other
islands very, very difficult. Americans controlled it. They had a staging point for all
kinds of missions and supplies, so it was critical. NARRATOR: Throughout
the month of August, the American Navy moved as
many Marines as possible onto Guadalcanal. But the Japanese Navy had other
plans for this remote outpost. On August 8th, ships from the
Japanese Imperial Navy quietly maneuvered past a half
dozen allied warships, both American and
Australian, into what today is known as Iron Bottom Sound. The surprise attack
that followed was one of the greatest Allied
Naval losses of the war. Four cruisers were
sunk outright, a fifth damaged beyond repair. More than 1,000 Allied
sailors lost their lives. And Guadalcanal was now
without Naval support. The Japanese began unloading
troops and supplies unfettered, in plain sight of the Marines
stationed in the coastal plain. Their target was
Henderson Field. To control the
airstrip meant control of the island and a quick
end to the fighting. It was up to the 800
men in the First Raiders led by Merritt Edson to stop a
surge of 3,000 Japanese troops before they reached Henderson. To prepare for the attack,
Edson chose a knife-shaped ridge above Henderson Field on
which to position his troops. From here, he would make one
of the most famous stands of the war. We were going to
this rest area, which was right at the ridge that
was pointing right at Henderson Field. It was a long, low serpentine
type of ridge with kunai grass waist or chest high, sharp as
needles, surrounded by jungle. NARRATOR: At 11:00 PM
on September 12, 1942, Japanese planes
dropped green flares over the Raiders' perimeter. Minutes later, Japanese
troops poured out of the darkened jungle. Greatly outnumbered and
almost certain to be overrun, Edson ordered his men to retreat
to a fallback position on top of the ridge. The Raiders bunkered
down in foxholes. Enemy machine guns
and rifle fire came in from seemingly
all directions. Many of the Raiders were
near the breaking point, but Edson stood firm. He supposedly told them,
you're all Marines. Get up on this ridge and fight. He held off several banzai
attacks of the Japanese. And in between times,
in between the attacks, they spent their time
digging huge foxholes, which protected them from
the Japanese artillery fire and ultimately saved
the day for them. NARRATOR: By morning, when
the smoke had cleared, the Raiders still
controlled Henderson Field. During the battle,
they had lost 138 men. The Marines' First Parachute
Battalion lost 128. A total of 700
Japanese were dead. Another 500, who were
wounded, but later escaped, died in the jungle. The hilltop where the Raiders
made this valiant final stand was given a name,
after their leader. It became known as
Edson's Bloody Ridge. The Raider Battle of the
Ridge was a defining moment for the campaign. They had other big battles over
that same ground-- one big one, anyway-- later on, but they
had the manpower then and the support that they
didn't have when we were there. NARRATOR: Though the fight
for Henderson Field was over, the battle for
Guadalcanal was not. Japanese troops still
patrolled the jungle, and another offensive was making
its way west to engage poorly supplied Allied soldiers. The Marines sent Evans Carlson
and his 800-man Second Raider battalion behind enemy lines
to seek out and destroy the advancing Japanese column. The 31-day mission, one of the
longest in military history, was called the Long Patrol. RG ROSENQUIST: They killed
somewhere around 600 or 700 Japanese, tore up some long
range guns and so forth, and they lost 16 men. They were behind the Jap lines
on Guadalcanal for 30 days. And I'd say that
was the classic. NARRATOR: Brutal hand-to-hand
combat in the jungle was a daily occurrence. WILLIAM LANSFORD: We were able
to kill literally hundreds of Japanese and lose only a
fraction of that in Raiders. And one time, I think we
knocked all about 50 of them at Asamana, and we
lost three Raiders. But the odds were
always that way. You know, the
Japanese were not-- they didn't expect
that Americans would be able to do that. NARRATOR: Despite the
success in battle, living conditions on the Long
Patrol were beyond miserable. We lived-- literally-- lived on rice and tea
and a little bit of bacon occasionally. That was our whole diet
during that period. NARRATOR: Despite the
hardships, Carlson's Long Patrol was a success. Thought to be the longest
of its type in World War II, it resulted in 448 enemy killed. The Raiders lost 16
men and had 18 wounded. WILLIAM LANSFORD: And we were
able to hit them and then disappear into the jungle, which
must have galled the Japanese because they were supposed to
be that great jungle fighters. The result was that after 30
days following and hitting these poor guys, the
regiment ceased to exist. When it arrived at its
destination, it was useless. And my understanding is that
the colonel burned his flag and shot himself, and that
was the end of that effort. NARRATOR: The victory was
especially sweet for Evans Carlson and his son, who
had disobeyed his father, and fought alongside him in the
bloody battle for Guadalcanal. But the Raiders would soon find
out that their heroic status, paid for with so much
blood, would be tragically short-lived. The days of the Raiders
were coming to an end. Following the hard fought
victory at Guadalcanal, the US Marine Raiders continued
to push across the Pacific. One of the most deadly
battles came at a place called New Georgia Island. The Fourth Raiders Battalion
attacked Japanese outposts. Heavy losses were
sustained on both sides. For the Fourth
Raiders Battalion, the battle would always be
known as the baptism of fire. The fighting was intense. Raiders were sent into battle
without adequate air cover and were outnumbered
by the Japanese troops. FRANK GUIDONE: We went
in without any artillery, without any 80 millimeter. No air did materialize, and I
don't know why the ships never fired in our support,
but we made the attack and we couldn't do it. We had to back off. That's the only time I think
we didn't get our objective. And that was kind of the
story of New Georgia. NARRATOR: One of the last
campaigns for the Raiders came early in 1944, at an
island called Bougainville. ARTHUR HAAKE: But Bougainville
was flat and a jungle almost immediately from the beach on. Within a short period
of time, it was swamped. And it was a dense
growth, complete swampy. Part of the swamp, we
couldn't get through at all. No one fought over that
particular piece of ground. The rest of it was
completely mud. Foxholes were all full of water. Because they were actually in
the swamp, and this is the way we went through this thing. NARRATOR: Though the
Japanese were on the run, they were not going to give up
Bougainville without a fight. CARL PETTIT: We
got on the beach, and the Japanese
planes around, they were strafing us off and on. And it was just
push, push, push. About all I can say
about it because whatever the people said do, we did. And we just kept moving. NARRATOR: The Second and
Third Raiders battalions of 800 men each fought
on, despite casualties. RG ROSENQUIST: The round-- I think it was a sniper--
it went to the guy's canteen next to me and then
went into my leg. If it hadn't, I'd probably
had some serious injuries. But I never came off
the line on that. And I limped for a
while, but a corpsman pulled the slug out of my leg
and put some sulfur powder on it, and we went on. NARRATOR: By January 1944,
the battle for Bougainville was over. The Japanese army retreated. But fighting in the Pacific
was no longer a Raider game. Instead of small
insurgency groups, the military needed
large invasion forces. The days of the
Raiders were over. They were folded back into the
ranks of the regular Marine Corps, and many fought
at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. In fact, Mike Strang, a
member of the Second Raiders, was one of the six men who
raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. ELLEN GUILLEMETTE:
The prevailing thought held before the
formation of the Raiders, that every Marine, in
essence, could be a Raider, but they didn't need to have
these separate organizations, but what they needed
are people to be trained for special operations, as
these operations came up. It kind of led them to believe
that we need to go back to the idea that you
don't need an elite unit within an elite unit. NARRATOR: Evans Carlson, the
leader of the Raiders Second Battalion, lost his command. After leaving the
Raiders, he went on to fight in three
Marine campaigns-- Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Saipan. He was severely wounded on
Saipan while rescuing his radio men, but return to duty and
served for the rest of the war. WILLIAM LANSFORD: The high
command finally got Carlson. They took the Raiders
away from him. They made a staff officer
out of him, an observer. To the best of my
knowledge, he never received a command of
his own ever again. Oh, they pinned another
Navy Cross on him, you know. They gave him medals, but
that didn't give him the thing that he wanted the most. And that was what he used to
call my Raiders, you know, my boys. So they had a short
two-year history, but they blazed a lot of
glory in those two years. NARRATOR: Carlson retired in
1946 at the rank of Brigadier General US Marine Corps. He died in 1947 and is buried
at Arlington National Cemetery. At the Marine Raiders Museum
in Richmond, Virginia, thousands of artifacts
from the Raider glory days are on display-- guns that blazed across the
Pacific, hundreds of photos of the Raiders in
action, and the knives that the men who wore the
distinctive Raider patch used to clear jungle
path and kill the enemy. But perhaps the part of the
museum that brings the most pride is the honor roll
doors, created by a Raider, which lists the names
of all 8,000 Raiders. For the Raiders veterans,
their record of service speaks for itself. ROBERT BUERLEIN: 8% of
all of the medals of honor won by Marines in World War II
were won by the Marine Raiders. Now these were not
necessarily men who were Marine Raiders
at the time they won the Medal of Honor. They might have been with
the new fourth regiment or with the sixth
Marine Division. You find that 12%
of the Navy crosses, which is second to
the medal of honor, were won by Marine Raiders. And you find that 8%
of the silver stars were won by men who
were at the time, or had served earlier,
as Marine Raiders. So the statistics show that
these were a pretty brave group of guys who loved to fight. NARRATOR: Today,
the Raider legacy lives on in the military. Many of the tactics
used by elite units like the Navy SEALs,
the Green Berets, and Marine Force Recon
units can be directly traced to the Raiders. I was at a reunion
here in San Diego, and we went up to Pendleton. And the recon outfit
put on a show for us. And I'll never get-- standing
with about 50 of these Raiders and their eyes were this big. And here were these modern day
Marines coming in, dangling from helicopters on these ropes,
doing about 80 miles an hour, at 1,500 feet in the air. One guy looked at
me and he says, my God, I wouldn't have done
that for all the tea in China. And all these kids were
just looking up to them like those heroes,
which they are. NARRATOR: The Raiders
said it is their spirit, their gung-ho beliefs that
keeps their bond strong, even in death. William Lansford first got
to know many of his closest friends in the Raiders
Second Battalion. When his good friend, Al
Flores, was dying of cancer, the Raider glory days is
all they talked about. WILLIAM LANSFORD:
He was lying there in bed with his
tubes and all that, and reliving the old days. And he said, do you
remember when we did this? You remember how we
went through the lines? He said, you remember
when you had to go back and I took you through
the Japanese lines? And then, yeah, I remember. And then he took my arm
like this, and he said, we must have been crazy, Bill. And then he turned
and said to my wife, we must have been crazy. He died two days later. NARRATOR: During the late
1990s, the Marine Corps began searching for the
bodies of fallen soldiers in the Pacific. Amazingly, 19 remains of the
Raiders killed on Makin Island were found. Natives had assisted
Carlson's Raiders to bury the men
following the battle. And it was one of
these locals, now an old man, who helped
the US military locate the site of the mass grave. JOHN MCCARTHY: Lo and
behold, 57 years later, that's where they were. And it was about, I
think, about 50 meters from where he said it was. And they recovered
every one of them. They also recovered 54 live Mark
II fragmentation hand grenades, several weapons. They were all buried
with their helmets on. NARRATOR: The remains were taken
to Arlington National Cemetery, where they were buried
with full military honors. Perhaps the spirit
of the Marine Raiders is best summed up by one of
their greatest leaders, Colonel Evans Carlson. In a wartime interview,
he talked about what it meant to be a Raider. EVANS CARLSON: Remember only
those who worked and sacrificed for the preservation
of democracy are entitled to
enjoy its benefits. If you are all out
in this war, you may know that you are gung-ho
with the men who are fighting so magnificently, moving ever
nearer to the last victorious day of the war. They are making
their contributions. You make yours. Together, we go on
towards peace, comrades all working together,
truly gung-ho. [theme music]
