Going Long: The 2nd Marine Raiders’ Legendary March Across Guadalcanal
By David Sears
8/14/2016 • World War II Magazine
Bonfires lit the beaches of Aola Bay on Guadalcanal’s northeast shore as two companies of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion splashed ashore before dawn on November 4, 1942.
The Raiders—led by Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson—were joining U.S. Army and Marine Corps ground forces under the command of Marine Major General Alexander Vandegrift in the battle for the largest of the Solomon Islands—then raging for nearly three months. American units controlled a knobby headland at Lunga Point, where they seized a Japanese airstrip, christening it Henderson Field after Major Lofton Henderson, a Marine flier killed at Midway. Now Vandegrift wanted to expand the Americans’ toehold on Guadalcanal with a second airstrip east of Aola Bay.
After a near-disastrous raid at Makin Atoll in August 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson saw on Guadalcanal an opportunity for redemption.
Carlson’s 2nd Raiders were to secure the beachhead for the arrival of naval construction workers and army garrison troops, then leave aboard supply and transport ships. But as the battalion was setting foot on the island, Japanese destroyers landed 1,500 reinforcements halfway between Lunga Point and Aola, and the 2nd Raiders’ mission took a sharp turn. Vandegrift deployed Marine and army units to ambush the new Japanese arrivals, and ordered Carlson’s Raiders to mop up enemy soldiers who managed to escape the trap. Then the Raiders were to clear areas of enemy activity west of the Henderson Field perimeter. It was a straight-line distance of just over 18 miles, but the men would not be traveling in a straight line over open terrain. Instead, they would be forced to hack their way through dense, unforgiving jungle foliage in extreme heat.
http://www.historynet.com/2nd-marine-raiders-legendary-march-across-guadalcanal.htm
