Red Cloud, Part Two

After their final assault training was complete, the entire Second Marine Raider Battalion, less Company “A,” was set to go. On 1 November 1942, they embarked on three old flush-decked, four-pipers that had been converted to carry troops: USS MANLEY (APD-l), McKEAN (APD-5), and SOUTHARD (DMS-10). The APD’s had suffered the loss of their forward fire rooms and two of their four stacks to make berthing spaces for the raiders. Each raider company of the Second Battalion now consisted of a compact group of men organized into two rifle and one weapons platoon. SOUTHARD’s innards had not been that accommodating and some of the raiders slept on deck. “F” Company was in USS McKEAN and Red Cloud was a member of the weapons platoon as a machine-gunner.

One can only guess at the scenes below decks as the three old destroyers closed on Guadalcanal that November. The smells of sweat, fuel oil, vomit, gun oil, and stack gas must have been overwhelming. The innards of a destroyer like the old four-pipers were, at best, cramped. When built originally in the late teens, there were no showers; the sailors washed out of buckets. The latrines were primitive affairs and the rocking, rolling hulls were equally bereft of creature comforts. Hopefully, as time passed and these old ships were placed back in commission, some effort was made to ‘modernize’ them. In 1942, with Japan rampaging all over the Pacific, creature comforts were indeed scarce aboard the US Navy’s ships of WWI vintage.

A stiff off-shore breeze in the early morning of 4 November 1942 carried the cloying smell of rotting vegetation and decaying bodies to the raiders. They had arrived at Guadalcanal. It was a smell the men of the Second Raider Battalion would learn to live with and forever after associate with Guadalcanal. At 4:00 AM or thereabouts, F company got into their rubber boats and, together with the rest of the Battalion from the two other ships, rowed ashore at Aola Bay. The boats were equipped with outboard motors, but Carlson decided against using them lest their noise alert the Japanese to their presence. The landing was made without incident and the raiders moved inland. Their mission was to silence the Japanese artillery that was firing on Henderson Field making flight operations hazardous. Guadalcanal is ninety-something miles long and thirty-three miles wide at its widest. The Kavo Mountains form its spine, its flanks run down to the sea and are seamed by countless streams. The coast is marshy and the island has no decent harbor.

The Long Patrol

For the next 30 days, the men of the Second Marine Raider Battalion would make history on Guadalcanal and their deeds would be known as the “Long Patrol,” an event that would enter the Corps history books alongside Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Bougainville.

One of the legendary characters of the Long Patrol was retired Sergeant Major Jacob Charles Vouza. Vouza was born in 1900 in Tasimboko on Guadalcanal and joined the Solomon Islands Protectorate Armed Constabulary in 1916, retiring in 1941. When the First Marine Division arrived on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942, he wasted no time in volunteering his services as a scout, services which were gladly accepted by the Marines. While on an intelligence-gathering mission, he was captured by a Japanese patrol who discovered a small US flag hidden in his loin cloth. For several years before the arrival of the Japanese, a man named Ishikawa lived on Guadalcanal. He was, in fact, a Japanese agent and Vouza was brought to him for interrogation. When Vouza would not tell the Japanese agent anything, Ishikawa ordered the soldiers to beat him with their rifle butts. After a few hours of this fruitless exercise, Ishikawa concluded that Vouza was not going to give up anything of value, so, he told the soldiers to kill him. The soldiers bayoneted him several times while he was tied to a tree and left him to die. But Vouza was made of stern stuff. He slipped his bonds, made his way back to his Marines, and spent twelve days in the hospital recovering from his wounds. By the time the Second Raiders arrived, he was up and about, and he wasted no time in attaching himself to Carlson’s command. It was a happy association. Vouza and his volunteers, Solomon Islanders like himself who felt a strong bond with Great Britain, proved to be a valuable resource for Carlson. They scouted ahead of his companies, carried wounded raiders back to medical attention, provided food when scheduled airdrops were missed, and guided the raiders to Japanese positions. Their knowledge of the island proved invaluable when the raiders discovered that their compasses were useless because of Guadalcanal’s heavy deposits of iron ore. When their maps proved hopelessly outdated, the raiders turned to Jacob Vouza and his men to take them where they wanted to go. Because of his aid to the US forces on Guadalcanal, General Vandegrift personally pinned the Silver Star on Vouza. Vouza also got the Legion of Merit and a grateful King George awarded him the George Medal for gallantry. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Vouza in 1979 and created him a Member of the Order of the British Empire. Sir Jacob Vouza died on 15 March 1984.

Carlson and his raiders slogged through the malaria-infested jungle looking for the Japanese and their artillery. They moved through the jungle quietly at times and at times Carlson would order them to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to flush out the Japanese. Carlson had one favorite tactic, and it worked flawlessly almost every time. Whenever a raider patrol ran into a Japanese position, the patrol would fan out, surround the Japanese, and maintain contact throughout the day, firing, and moving around its flanks, always threatening to attack but not attacking, just keeping the Japanese troops occupied and worried about an expected attack. Carlson would then call in fresh raiders, and, the next day, he would launch an attack against the pinned-down Japanese troops with an overwhelmingly superior force against their weakest flank. The attack would carry the day. The Japanese never caught on, and Carlson used this tactic time and time again. Each time he attacked the Japanese, their response would be weaker and weaker and Carlson concluded that the Japanese were being worn down by a combination of bad food and water, malaria, and the jungle itself with its cornucopia of afflictions and dangers. Actually, Carlsons raiders, too, were being worn down by the same combination of factors like malaria, near famine conditions, bad water, and the psychological cost of fighting in a hot, humid place where rain was constant and sudden death a reality.

The days followed one another with alarming sameness. The jungle canopy erased the sun and formed an umbrella under which the raiders fought their enemy. Lack of sleep and the constant activity began to grind friend and foe alike. Vouza and his men helped to lighten the load. And when the Long Patrol ended, 30 days after it had begun, Carlson’s men had marched back and forth across the same terrain so many times they could not give an accurate count of the miles they had covered. They had found the Japanese batteries that had shelled Henderson Field and had destroyed them, in the course of which they had accounted for almost 500 dead enemy troops. They had destroyed enemy supplies, burned his ammunition dumps, interdicted his supply lines, severed his lines of communication, and taken the pressure off Army and Marines on the island. For all of this, the Second Raider Battalion had lost 19 KIA and 122 WIA to the loss to the Japanese of 700 dead. This last figure was supplied by the Seabees who followed the raiders and buried the dead enemy soldiers.

By 4 December 1942, it was all over for the raiders. They had fought at Riko Mission, Assmana, Binu, the Upper Lunga River, and Mount Austen. Red Cloud looked back on these engagements and on a dozen or so other smaller ones with a sense of relief. He had come through, but at a cost to himself. He had contracted a case of malaria so bad that he had lost about 75 pounds. He had jaundice and a laundry list of other tropical ailments, as did other raiders.

Period of Recovery

After a ten day rest and refit period, the Battalion embarked on USS NEVILLE (APA-9) for Espiritu Santo, arriving there on the 17th of December, 1942. On 14 January 1943, Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr. was ordered home to be evaluated for a possible medical discharge because of his malaria and other ailments. Red Cloud entered the US Naval Hospital in San Diego in February of 1943. The doctors examined him thoroughly and decided to offer him a medical discharge. He refused it and chose to  remain in the service. The doctors then gave him a long convalescent leave to recuperate pending further evaluation. He returned to the loving bosom of his family in March, and the change was striking. The stark contrast to the dismal half-light of the rain forest with its daily downpours to the clean, clear air of spring-time Wisconsin combined with the familiar tastes and smells of his mothers kitchen worked wonders on his shrunken frame. He had gone down from 185 pounds to a wraith-like 115 pounds. His appearance to those he had left behind was startling. Gone was the laughing, jovial, anything-goes teen. In his place was a 17-year- old-war veteran of some of the Pacific war’s worst fighting. His jungle sores and jaundice vanished and his weight began to climb back up as the horrors of the jungle began to fade from his memory. Before long, he was on the local lecture circuit speaking before civic groups, fraternal organizations, and schools urging his listeners to support their fighting men in every way and telling them how important letters from home were. Write, he told them, write and write again to the men in uniform. He was not yet eighteen years old and, while most of his old high school chums were thinking of starting college that fall he was recuperating from combat. By late May of 1943, he was in Parris Island awaiting orders for his next assignment. Time waits for no one the old saying goes and, while Red Cloud was home on leave, radical changes were roiling the raiders. On March 15th, all four raider battalions were formed into the First Marine Raider Regiment. More changes would alter the face of the Second Battalion. On April 5th, the Second’s A and F companies were dissolved. B company became the new E company; C company became the new F company; D company became the new G company and E company became the new H company. Yet more changes were to follow in 1944.

Back to Action

When the men of the Second Raider Battalion learned that their beloved CO was to be relieved, they cursed a malevolent Fate but took the bad news. Some wept. Others carried on in other ways. It was a body blow the Second Raiders never recovered from. Evans Carlson, innovator, iconoclast, wave-maker and born leader had been “kicked upstairs” to the Fourth Marine Division. He made the Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Saipan landings and was seriously wounded on Saipan when he went to the aid of his radioman who was hit by enemy fire, The Second Raiders had one more fight to fight: Bougainville. On 1 November 1943, they hit its beaches and worked their way inland finding and fighting the enemy at Piva Trail, Coconut Grove, and Numa Numa. Carlson wasn’t with them and neither was Vouza, but they gave a good account of themselves. By 12 January 1944, they had been withdrawn from that island and returned to Guadalcanal, there to await their orders. When orders came, they were a disappointment. All the raider battalions were disestablished on 1 February 1944. The Corps had other plans for the Raiders.

The famed “China Marines,” officially the Fourth Marine Regiment, was to be reformed. It had been destroyed by the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942. Its survivors languished in Japanese POW camps, yet its spirit lived on. The newly resurrected regiment would be manned by the just recently disestablished raiders. So, the First, Third, and Fourth Raider Battalions became the Fourth Marines’ new First, Second, and  Third Battalions, while the Second Raiders became the regiment’s Weapons Company.

Red Cloud was not a part of the Fourth Marines. But the Raiders were still a part of him. Somewhere between his return to duty at Paris Island and his return to the Pacific war, he struggled with his feelings about his dead comrades. He reached down deep within himself and found the words to express his feelings.

“These that were my comrades, Marines so gay

Unmindful of self, they fought and died

To live, to love in a day of victory denied

In solemn thought I prayed and plead

That not for long we and our buddies may bleed

Long shall I remember this day –

I stood head bowed and heard the Chaplain pray

In reverence to buddies, I came to say

In silent thought, my last farewell

To comrades, to buddies who fell

Now resting under frond-draped mounds

Tears glistened at the “Taps”- pathos-filled sound

No more shall I hear their friendly whisper

In death-infested darkness, so reassuring

Nothing daunted, duty-bound and unafraid

May their spirit ever inspiring courage

Strengthen me to carry on to finish

The task for which they gave their all

Unflinching, they met the foe, bravely to fall

Years may pass, still I’ll recall distinctly

At the jungle burial ground

The palm trees, in sympathy remaining heads bowed

Rustling, whispering that all will be well

Long after our tearful leaving will they stand

Battle-scarred, seared and without a helping hand

Silent sentries, ever watchful over our comrades

Now resting under frond-draped mounds.”

When Red Cloud shipped out again, he was a member of Lt. Wilbur Gehrke’s machine gun platoon in A Company, 29th Marines, 6th Marine Division. He served as Gehrke’s runner/radio operator for a short period of time on Okinawa. On 17 May 1945, the war ended abruptly for Red Cloud when he took a bullet in his left shoulder. That was it for him. He was evacuated to Guam, and from there he rode back to the USA on the light cruiser USS ATLANTA (CL-104) with about 50 other troops. On 9 November 1945, the Marines handed Red Cloud $56.70 and an honorable discharge and bid him goodbye.

Click Here for Red Cloud Part Three