Evans Carlson and the 2nd Raider Battalion

[KG Erwin]

I mention this as Lt Col Evans F. Carlson pioneered the concept of the fire team, with a BAR man, a M1 Garand man, and a Thompson SMG gunner. Three of these fireteams, headed up by a squad leader, formed the squad in 1942. As the 2nd Raider Battalion was a special unit, they were the first Marines in WWII to get the Garand Rifle. Two platoons, plus two sections of air-cooled .30 MGs and a section of .60mm mortars, formed a company in Carlson's battalion. The battalion contained six of these companies (A-F) and rendered valuable service during their two-year existence (1942-1944). However, Carlson's greatest contribution to the USMC was the fire team concept, which, with the addition of an additionial rifleman, was adopted throughout the Corps in 1944 and remains in existence to this day.

[Jeffrey H.]

So, a fire team was a 3 man element and a platoon was a 9 man one ? 2x fire team platoons and 1 'section' each of the MG and mortar formed a company, roughly 36 men ?

[Canoerebel]

When you compare the leadership displayed by the two raider battalion commanders in their first combat missions - Edson at Tulagi and Guadalcanal, and Carlson at Makin - what conclusions can be drawn about the quality of their leadership and the style?

Both were pioneering, brave soldiers, but they had very different personalities and qualities.

[Perturabo]

Weren't the Musketen Battalions from WWI based on the same idea?

[KG Erwin]

Yeah, Edson and Carlson had different command styles, as Edson was more of a "conventional" Marine type, whereas Carlson was famous for instilling the "Gung ho (working together)" guerrilla ethos amongst his battalion. Their history is interesting to read about, but in spring 1944 it became a moot point as the Raiders were folded into regular Marine units. However, their methods survived into the modern day, as are reflected in the fire team concept and the special forces-capable units of today's USMC.

Note: the reason I brought this up was that I attempted a USMC long campaign in SPWAW using a Raider battalion. I failed miserably at it because they were not designed to be frontline units, as they had no heavy weapons at their disposal. Edson's Raiders were used as such in the famous Battle of Bloody Ridge at Guadalcanal in Sept 1942. They held, but suffered tremendously. Against the banzai charges of the Japanese, elan isn't enough. You need all the firepower you can get, which includes the heavy 81mm mortars and 30 cal HMGs which the Raiders didn't have. All they had were 60mm's and 30 cal medium (air-cooled) MGs.

[wosung]

This might be interesting for military buffs and linguists as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung-ho
Gung ho is a slang term in American English used to mean "enthusiastic" or "dedicated" originally used in Marine slang.

The term was picked up by United States Marine Corps Major Evans Carlson from his New Zealand friend, Rewi Alley, one of the founders of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. Carlson explained in a 1943 interview: "I was trying to build up the same sort of working spirit I had seen in China where all the soldiers dedicated themselves to one idea and worked together to put that idea over. I told the boys about it again and again. I told them of the motto of the Chinese Cooperatives, Gung Ho. It means Work Together-Work in Harmony...." [1]

Later Carlson used gung ho during his (unconventional) command of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. From there it spread throughout the U.S. Marine Corps (hence the association between the two), where it was used as an expression of spirit and into American society as a whole when the phrase became the title of a 1943 war film, Gung Ho!, about the 2nd Raider Battalion's raid on Makin Island in 1942.

"Gung ho" is an anglicised pronunciation of "gōng hé" (工合), the shortened version and slogan of the "gōngyè hézuòshè" (工業合作社) or Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, which was abbreviated as INDUSCO in English.

The two Chinese characters forming the word Gung Ho are translated individually as "Work" and "Together".

The linguist Albert Moe studied both the origin and the usage in English. He concludes that the term is an "Americanism that is derived from the Chinese, but its several accepted American meanings have no resemblance whatever to the recognized meaning in the original language" and that its "various linguistic uses, as they have developed in the United States, have been peculiar to American speech." In Chinese, concludes Moe, "this is neither a slogan nor a battle cry; it is only a name for an organization." [2]

Regards

[ding5689]

It is really my honor to have this opportunity for a interview,
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[Anonymous]

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