Satisfied by the utility of the destroyer transport, the Navy redesignated Manley yet again, this time as the lead ship of a new class, APD-1. The APD designation denoted a highspeed transport. By the end of 1940 the Navy yards had reactivated five of Manley’s sister ships and converted them in the same fashion. In its haste, the Navy had left out any semblance of amenities for embarked Marines. When Lieutenant Colonel Edson took his battalion on board the APD squadron in the summer of 1941, each troop compartment was nothing more than an empty space—no ventilation, no bunks, and just four washbasins for 130 men. It took a high-level investigation, launched by one Marine’s letter to his congressman, to get the billeting spaces upgraded.
These original six APDs would be the only ones available until the Navy rushed to complete more in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. As the two raider battalions moved out into the Pacific, so did the APDs. All six ships saw service in the Solomons campaign, but only Manley and Stringham (APD 6) survived. Japanese bombers sank Colhoun (APD 2) on 30 August 1942, just after it had transferred a company of the 1st Raiders from Tulagi to Guadalcanal. Enemy destroyers sank Gregory (APD 3) and Little (APD 4) in the early morning hours of 5 September 1942 after the two transports had participated with the 1st Raiders in a reconnaissance of Savo Island. A torpedo bomber ended the existence of McKean (APD 5) on 17 November 1943 as she ferried troops to Bougainville. Before the war was over, the Navy would convert another 133 destroyers and destroyer escorts to the transport role.
Shaping the Raiders
The raider battalions soon received first priority in the Marine Corps on men and equipment. Edson and Carlson combed the ranks of their respective divisions and also siphoned off many of the best men pouring forth from the recruit depots. They had no difficulty attracting volunteers with the promise that they would be the first to fight the Japanese. Carlson’s exactions were much greater than those required to fill out Edson’s battalion, but both generated resentment from fellow officers struggling to flesh out the rapidly expanding divisions on a meager skeleton of experienced men. The raiders also had carte blanche to obtain any equipment they deemed necessary, whether or not it was standard issue anywhere else in the Corps.
Carlson and Roosevelt soon broke the shackles that Holcomb had attempted to impose on them. They rejected most of the men whom Edson sent them, and they adjusted the organization of their battalion to suit their purposes. They also inculcated the unit with an unconventional military philosophy that was an admixture of Chinese culture, Communist egalitarianism, and New England town hall democracy. Every man would have the right to say what he thought, and their battle cry would be “Gung Ho!”—Chinese for “work together.” Officers would have no greater privileges than the men, and would lead by consensus rather than rank. There also would be “ethical indoctrination,” which Carlson described as “giv[ing] conviction through persuasion.” That process supposedly ensured that each man knew what he was fighting for and why.
The 2d Raiders set up their pup tents at Jacques Farm in the hills of Camp Elliot, where they remained largely segregated from civilization. Carlson rarely granted liberty, and sometimes held musters in the middle of the night to catch anyone who slipped away for an evening on the town. He even tried to convince men to forego leave for family emergencies, though he did not altogether prohibit it.
Training focused heavily on weapons practice, hand-to-hand fighting, demolitions, and physical conditioning, to include an emphasis on long hikes. As the men grew tougher and acquired field skills, the focus shifted to more night work. Carlson also implemented an important change to the raider organization promulgated from Washington. Instead of a unitary eight-man squad, he created a 10-man unit composed of a squad leader and three fire teams of three men each. Each fire team boasted a Thompson submachine gun, a Browning automatic rifle (BAR), and one of the new Garand M-1 semiautomatic rifles. To keep manpower within the constraints of the carrying capacity of an APD, each rifle company had just two rifle platoons and a weapons platoon. Carlson’s system of organization and training was designed to create a force suited “for infiltration and the attainment of objectives by unorthodox and unexpected methods.” He and Roosevelt were developing the guerrilla unit they had envisioned.
Edson’s battalion retained the table of organization he had designed. It was based on an eight-man squad, with a leader, two BAR men, four riflemen armed with the M-1903 Springfield bolt-operated rifle, and a sniper carrying a Springfield mounting a telescopic sight. (Later in the war he would champion the four-man fire team that became the standard for all Marine infantry.) With smaller squads, his companies contained three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon. His weapons company provided additional light machine guns and 60mm mortars. (The 81mm mortar platoon, added to the headquarters company by the Commandant, would not deploy overseas with the battalion.)
Training was similar to that in the 2d Raiders, except for more rubber boat work due to the convenient location of Quantico on the Potomac River. The 1st Raiders also strove to reach a pace of seven miles per hour on hikes, more than twice the normal speed of infantry. They did so by alternating periods of double-timing with fast walking. Although Red Mike emphasized light infantry tactics, his men were not guerrillas. Instead, they formed a highly trained battalion prepared for special operations as well as more conventional employment.