Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 67934
On 15 March 1943 the Marine Corps created the 1st Raider Regiment and gave it control of all four battalions. Liversedge, now a colonel, took charge of the new organization. A week later, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Shapley took over command of the 2d Raiders. He was an orthodox line officer who had earned a Navy Cross on board the Arizona (BB 39) on 7 December 1941. He thought the Makin Raid had been a “fiasco,” and he had no interest in “Gung Ho.” Shapley wasted no time in turning the unit into “a regular battalion.” Carlson temporarily became the regimental executive officer, but served there only briefly before entering the hospital weak from malaria and jaundice. Soon thereafter he was on his way stateside. A month later Lieutenant Colonel Michael S. Currin, another officer with more orthodox views, took command of the 4th Raiders from Roosevelt.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 60133
MajGen Alexander A. Vandegrift (with riding crop) troops the line of the 2d Raider Battalion in New Caledonia in 1943. LtCol Alan Shapley, the battalion commander, is on Vandegrift’s left. Shapley ended Carlson’s “Gung Ho” experiments.
The regiment enforced a common organization among the battalions. The result was a mixture of Edson and Carlson’s ideas. Carlson bequeathed his fire team and squad to the raiders (and later to the Corps as a whole). But each battalion now had a weapons company, and four rifle companies composed of a weapons platoon and three rifle platoons. Edson’s other imprint was the concept of a highly trained, lightly equipped force using conventional tactics to accomplish special missions or to fill in for a line battalion. The 1st Raider Regiment was no guerrilla outfit. Given the changing thrust of the Pacific war, the choice was a wise one. In the future the Marines would be attacking Japanese forces holed up in tight perimeters or on small islands. Guerrilla tactics provided no answer to the problem of overcoming these strong defensive positions.
New Georgia
As the fighting on Guadalcanal drew to a close in early 1943, American commanders intensified their planning for the eventual seizure of Rabaul, the primary Japanese stronghold in the Southwest Pacific. This major air and naval base on the eastern end of New Britain was centrally located between New Guinea and the northwestern terminus of the Solomons. That allowed the Japanese to shift their air and naval support from one front to the other on short notice. Conversely, simultaneous American advances through New Guinea and the Solomons would threaten Rabaul from two directions. With that in mind, Admiral William F. Halsey’s South Pacific command prepared to drive farther up the Solomons chain, while MacArthur continued his operations along the New Guinea coast.