Duane Schultz - Evans Carlson, Marine Raider: The Man Who Commanded Americas First Special Forces

Jacques Farm, February 1942

Major Evans Carlson stood on a rickety platform built from three wooden crates, the kind their rations were packed in. He said nothing for a moment as he looked out over the group of young marines he and his executive officer had selected, after subjecting them to grueling interviews. These were the elite of the elite; the toughest and most adventurous of the already tough and daring marines. These were the men of the newly formed 2nd Marine Raider Battalion.

They were going to be America's first special-ops team, trained to strike back against the Japanese in the hit-and-run style of the British commandos. But they did not know that. They didn't know much of anything yet, but Carlson was about to tell them.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon on a chilly, rainy day in the second week of February 1942. The marines were assembled in the middle of a muddy field surrounded by eucalyptus trees, which made the whole area smell like menthol cough drops. This dismal place was called Jacques Farm; it was five miles south of Camp Elliott, a rapidly expanding and bustling part of the Marine Training Center near San Diego, California.

It was two months after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and US forces in the Pacific were being beaten back in one battle after another. Wake Island, Guam, and Bataan were no long unknown names to most Americans. From throughout the nation came angry rallying cries demanding that our forces take action against the Japanese for their attacks on our boys over there. But there would be much more death and loss and surrender before American forces were capable of doing that.

The marines at Jacques Farm would be the first to hit the Japanese and to defeat them on land. But before that happened, there would be Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, on April 18, 1942, which would mark the first victory in the air. The battle of Midway in the first week of June would bring America its first victory at sea. And in August, just two months later, Carlson's Raiders, as the press would call them, would thrill Americans with the first victory on land against a Japanese possession, the tiny island of Makin, two thousand miles west of Pearl Harbor.

Major Carlson and his men would become instant heroes on a huge scale; everyone would know about Evans Carlson and his Marine Raiders. But that fame, and the resentment and jealousy it created, would come at a price that he could not have conceived. At great personal cost, Evans Carlson would achieve what he set out to do: create an elite special-ops force that helped bring about the ultimate victory in the Pacific. The actions of his outfit boosted the morale of the American people when it was at its lowest point. And he accomplished this on his own terms, in his own way, in defiance of the establishment and its strict rules of order and conduct. This is the story of who he was and how he did it.