The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS Read online

  Nothing has ever come out, it seems useful to note, to hint that Colonel Donovan himself was behind the suggestion, or that the nation's first super-spy ever heard about it until long after World War II was over.

  On January 16, 1942, two days after it was dispatched (indicating that the officer courier bearing the letter was given an air priority to do so; he otherwise could not have arrived in California until January 17), Major General Price replied to the Major General Commandant's letter.

  In this letter, he didn't appear to be especially opposed to Donovan's becoming a Marine general in charge of Marine Commandos. He wrote that Donovan was "well qualified by natural bent and experience and probably more so than any General officer of the regular Marine Corps at present available for such assignment."

  General Price then turned to the whole idea of commando forces and the Marine Corps:

  If the personnel to conduct this new activity can be recruited almost entirely from new resources it would be the judgment of the undersigned that the entire spirit and plan of employment of the Commando groups is directly in line with the aggressive spirit of the Marine Corps, that it will add immeasurably to the fame and prestige of the Corps, and must inevitably attract to our ranks the most adventurous and able spirits of America's manhood.

  If, on the other hand, our very limited resources in trained officers must be further disbursed and if the best of the adventurous spirits and "go-getters" among our then must be diverted from the Fleet Marine Force in meeting the requirements of this additional activity (Commando Project), then the undersigned would recommend seriously against assuming this additional commitment.

  That was the official reply. The same day, General Price wrote a "Dear Tom" letter to the Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps. In it he wrote,

  There is another thing in this connection which I could not put in my other letter and that is the grave danger that this sort of thing will develop into a tail which will wag the dog eventually. I know in what quarter the idea of foisting this scheme upon the Marines originated, and I opine that if it is developed along the lines of a hobby in the hands of personnel other than regular Marine officers it could very easily get far out of hand and out of control as well.

  It appears pretty clear to me that you are in a position of having to comply and that nothing can be done about it so please accept my sympathy.

  Major General H. M. Smith's reply to the Major General Commandant's letter, also dated January 16, 1942, was typically concise and to the point:

  (a) All Amphibious Force Marines are considered as

  commandos and may be trained to high degree under their own

  officers in this form of training.

  (b) The appointment of Colonel Donovan to brigadier

  general could be compared to that of Lord Mountbatten in

  Great Britain-both are "royal" and have easy access to the

  highest authority without reference to their own immediate

  superiors.

  (c) The appointment would be considered by many senior

  officers of the Corps as political, unfair and a publicity stunt.

  (d) An appointment as brigadier general. Marines, doubt

  less would indicate that he is to form commandos from Marine

  Amphibious Forces. The commandant would lose control of

  that number of Marines assigned as commandos. We have

  enough "by-products" now.

  (e) No strictures are cast upon Colonel Donovan. He has a

  reputation for fearlessness but he has never been a Marine and

  his appointment would be accepted with resentment throughout

  the Corps. It would be stressed that the Marines had to go

  outside their own service for leaders.

  (f) It is the unanimous opinion of the staff of this headquarters

  that commando raids by the British have been of little

  strategical value. We have not reached the stage where our

  then are so highly trained and restless for action that they must

  be employed in commando raids.

  And then, as if he wasn't sure that the Major General Commandant would take his point, General Smith added,

  (g) I recommend against the appointment.

  Meanwhile, another brushfire had broken out. The senior U.S. Navy officer in England, Admiral H. R. Stark, had recommended to the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (Admiral King), that seven Marine officers and one hundred enlisted then be sent to England for training by and with British Commandos, and that when they were trained, they participate in a commando raid somewhere in Europe, under British command.

  Admiral King killed most of this idea on January 16. He wrote the Chief of Naval Operations, with a carbon copy to the Major General Commandant, authorizing a "small group of selected officers and non-commissioned officers" to be sent to England for about one month, "such personnel to be used as instructors in the Fleet Marine Force on their return," and disapproved Marine participation in British Commando operations.

  Three days later, Holcomb wrote to Samuel W. Meek, an executive of Time-Life, and a personal friend. After discussing an article someone planned to write for Life about the Marine Corps, and expressing the hope that "Mr. Luce (Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life, was then functioning as the supreme editor of the Time-Life empire) will be willing to suppress it," he turned to the subject of Donovan:

  The Donovan affair is still uppermost in my mind. I am terrified that I may be forced to take this man. I feel that it will be the worst slap in the face that the Marine Corps was ever given because it involves bringing into the Marine Corps as a leader in our own specialty that is, amphibious operations. Because commander [sic] work is simply one form of amphibious operation. It will be bitterly resented by our personnel, both commissioned and enlisted, and I am afraid that it may serve to materially reduce my usefulness in this office, if any, because I am expected, and properly so, to protect the Marine Corps from intrusions of this kind.

  Five days after this, the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet (Admiral King), sent a priority, SECRET radio message to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz:

  DEVELOP ORGANIZATION AND TRAINING OP MARINE AND NAVAL UNITS OF "COMMANDO" TYPE FOR USE IN CONNECTION WITH EXPEDITIONS OF RAID CHARACTER FOR DEMOLITION AND OTHER DESTRUCTION OF SHORE INSTALLATIONS IN ENEMY HELD ISLANDS AND BASES X

  Admiral Nimitz promptly ordered the Commanding General, Second Joint Training Force, San Diego, to form four company-sized commando units. He wrote that he had requested the transfer of destroyer-transports from the Atlantic Fleet to the Pacific Fleet, for use with the commando units. He also "authorized and directed" General Vogel to "request the services of any personnel who may be familiar with training, organization, and methods of foreign commando units."

  Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson was shortly thereafter named commanding officer of the 2nd Separate Battalion, Camp Elliott, San Diego, California (which was to be shortly renamed the 2nd Raider Battalion), and Captain James Roosevelt was named as his deputy'.

  And on February 16, 1942, Major General Holcomb finally heard from Colonel William J. Donovan. It had nothing to do with Commandos, Raiders, or his becoming a Marine general. Navy personnel officers, desperate for officers, were scraping the bottom of the barrel and had informed Donovan that they intended to reassign some of the Navy and Marine officers assigned to COI.

  Donovan made a reasoned, concise plea not to have the officers he was about to lose replaced by "a random selection of reserve or retired officers who would I am sure fall far short of our needs."

  If Major General Holcomb replied to Donovan, that letter is still buried in a dusty file someplace. But for the rest of the war, the Marine Corps was far more cooperative than any other service when it came to furnishing personnel to Colonel (later Major General) Wild Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. They included such people as Captain John Hamilton, USM
CR, better known as actor Sterling Hayden, and screenwriter Peter Viertel, Captain, USMCR… But that's still another story…

  Preface

  The first surrender of United States military forces in World War II-the first time, in fact, since the Civil War that American military forces went forward under a white flag to deliver American soil over to an enemy-took place on a tiny but militarily useful dot of volcanic rock in the Pacific Ocean, Wake Island, shortly after the Japanese struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

  In 1939, with war on the horizon, the U.S. Navy began to pay particular attention to the tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific. This almost infinitesimal U.S. possession was 450 miles from the Bikini atoll; 620 miles from the Marshalls, which the Japanese would certainly use for military purposes; 1,023 miles from Midway Island; and 1,300 miles from Guam. The USS Nitro was ordered to Wake to make preliminary engineering studies with a view to turning the atoll into a base for land (which of course included carrier-based) aircraft and submarines, and to fortify the island against any Japanese assault.

  In 1940, Congress appropriated the funds. On 19 August 1941, 6 officers and 173 enlisted then of the 1st Defense Battalion, USMC, were put ashore on Wake Island from the USS Regulus. The first of what would be about 1,200 construction workers landed a few days later, and in October, Major James P. S. Devereux, USMC, arrived from Hawaii to take command.

  Devereux brought with him two five-inch Naval cannon (which had been removed from obsolescent and scrapped battleships); four three-inch antiaircraft cannon (only one of which had the required fire-control equipment); twenty-four.50-caliber machine guns; and a large number (probably about one hundred) of air- and water-cooled.30-caliber Browning machine guns. And, of course, a stock of ammunition for his ordnance.

  Nine Marine officers and two hundred enlisted then from the Navy base at Pearl Harbor arrived on 2 November 1941, bringing the strength of the 1st Defense Battalion to approximately half of that provided for in the table of organization and equipment. On 28 November 1941, Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, USN, was detached from the aircraft tender USS Wright (after the Wright Brothers) with nine Navy officers and fifty-eight sailors to Wake to take control of the air station already under construction.

  As senior officer, Cunningham replaced Devereux as Commander of United States Forces, Wake Island.

  A five- thousand-foot runway was completed, and U.S. Army B-17 aircraft began to use Wake Island as a refueling stop en route to Guam, although it was necessary to fill the aircraft tanks by hand-pumping avgas from fifty-five-gallon barrels.

  On 3 December 1941, the USS Enterprise launched at sea twelve Grumman F4F fighters, of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, under Major Paul Putnam, USMC. They landed on the Wake Island landing strip that afternoon, and steps were immediately taken to begin bulldozing revetments for the aircraft.

  On Sunday, 7 December 1941 (Saturday, 6 December 1941 in Hawaii) Major Devereux gave his command the day off. His Marines swam in the surf, played Softball, and many of them- most of the young, recently recruited enlisted men-hurried to complete letters home. The letters would be carried to civilization aboard the Pan American Philippine Clipper moored in the lagoon, which would take off at first light for Guam. (Pan American had been using Wake as a refueling stop).

  Reveille sounded at 0600, 8 December 1941. While the Marines had their breakfast, the Pan American crew prepared the Philippine Clipper for flight.

  At 0650, the radio operator on duty at the air station communications section, attempting to establish contact with Hickam Field, Hawaii, began to receive uncoded messages, which did not follow established message-transmission procedures, to the effect that the island of Oahu was under attack. He informed the duty officer, who went to Major Devereux.

  At 0655, the Philippine Clipper rose from the lagoon and gradually disappeared from sight in the bright blue morning sky.

  When he was told of the "Oahu under attack" message, Major Devereux attempted to contact Commander Cunningham by telephone, but there was no answer.

  When he hung up the telephone, it immediately rang again. It was the communications shack; there was an urgent message from Hawaii, now being decoded.

  "Has the Clipper left?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Call it back," Devereux ordered, and then sent for his field music-his bugler.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Sound 'call to arms,' " Major Devereux ordered.

  Admiral Husband Kimmel's Pacific Fleet, and the navy base at Pearl Harbor, had been grievously wounded by the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, but that is not the same thing as destroyed. The battleship force of the Pacific Fleet had been essentially wiped out at its moorings ("Battleship Row") at Pearl Harbor, together with a number of other men-of-war and supply ships, and there had been great loss of aircraft and materiel.

  But the Fleet was not totally lost, nor were its supplies.

  There were three aircraft carriers available-the Saratoga, the Enterprise, and the Lexington-as well as a number of cruisers, plus a large number of smaller men-of-war.

  On December 13, 1941, Admiral Kimmel (who expected to be relieved at any minute as the Navy, and indeed the nation, searched for somebody on whom to blame the Pearl Harbor disaster) ordered Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to reinforce Wake Island.

  Fletcher put out the same day from Pearl Harbor with the aircraft carrier Saratoga; the cruisers Minneapolis, Astoria, and San Francisco; nine destroyers; a fleet oiler, and the transport Tangier.

  Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, equipped with Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats, was aboard the Saratoga (in addition to Saratoga's own aircraft), and the 4th Defense Battalion, USMC, was aboard the Tangier. The relief force carried with it nine thousand shells for Devereux's old five-inch battleship cannon, twelve thousand three-inch shells for his antiaircraft cannon, and three million rounds of belted.50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.

  The aircraft carrier Enterprise, and its accompanying cruisers and destroyers, was ordered to make a diversionary raid on the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. The carrier Lexington and its accompanying vessels put to sea to repel, should it come, a second Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands.

  At 2100 hours, 22 December 1941, a radio message was flashed from Pearl Harbor, ordering the Saratoga Wake Island relief force back to Hawaii. It had been decided at the highest echelons of command that Wake Island was not worth the risk of losing what was in fact one third of U.S. Naval strength in the Pacific. When the message was received, the Saratoga was five hundred miles (thirty-three hours steaming time) from Wake.

  At shortly after one in the morning of December 23, 1941, Japanese troops landed on Wake, near the airstrip.

  That afternoon, his ammunition gone, his heavy weapons out of commission, and greatly outnumbered, Major Devereux was forced to agree with Commander Cunningham that further resistance was futile and that surrender was necessary to avoid a useless bloodbath.

  Major Devereux had to roam the island personally to order the last pockets of resistance to lay down their arms.

  Four hundred seventy officers and then of the Marine Corps and Navy and 1,146 American civilian workmen entered Japanese -captivity.

  Chapter One

  (One)

  Wake Island

  1200 Hours, 18 December 1941

  Ensign E. H. Murphy, USN, had planned the flight of his Consolidated Aircraft PBYS Catalina to Wake Island with great care. It wasn't a question only of finding the tiny atoll, which of course required great navigational skill, but of reaching Wake when there was the least chance of being intercepted by Japanese aircraft.

  His Catalina was a seaplane (though the PBY5-A, fitted with retractable gear, was an amphibian) designed for long-range reconnaissance. Its most efficient cruising speed was about 160 MPH, so it had little chance of running away from an attacker. The high-winged, twin-engine Catalina had three gun ports, one on each side of the fuselage mounting a single.50-caliber machine gun, an
d one in the nose with a.30-caliber machine gun.

  If Ensign Murphy's Catalina encountered one of the Japanese bombers that had been attacking Wake on an almost daily basis, all the Japanese would have to do was slow down to his speed, and, far out of range of his.50-caliber machine guns, shoot him down at his leisure with his 20-mm machine cannon.

  It was a five-hour flight from Guam. Murphy took off at first light in the hope that he could be at Wake before the Japanese began their "scheduled" bombing attack.

  Hitting Wake on the nose was skill; finding it covered with a morning haze was good luck. He landed in the lagoon and taxied to the Pan American area. Commander Cunningham's requisition of Pan American's Philippine Clipper had been almost immediately overridden by Pacific Fleet, which had plans for the use of the aircraft itself, and it had flown on to Guam, carrying hastily patched Japanese bullet holes in its fuselage.

  Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211 was down to two Wildcats, although Major Putnam told Ensign Murphy that he hoped to get a third Wildcat back in the air within hours with parts scavenged from wrecked airplanes.

  Murphy carried with him official mail for Commander Cunningham and Major Devereux, including the last known position of the Saratoga relief force, but the Navy had not risked one of its precious few Catalinas solely to deliver messages. Many Catalinas had been destroyed on December 7, and what planes were left were in almost constant use.

  But there was on Wake one of the Marine Corps' few highly skilled communications officers, Major Walter L. J. Bayler, USMC, who had previously been assigned to the USS Wright and had come to Wake with Commander Cunningham. Bayler's services were desperately needed on Midway Island and the decision had been made to send for him, even at the great risk of losing him, and the Catalina carrying him, in the attempt.