The Battle of Makin: LtCol Howard Stidham

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Major George Petrie. Petrie served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in Vietnam, and was a member of MACV-SOG, which you can read about in the show description. In this interview, Petrie recounts Operation Ivory Coast, also known as the Son Tay Raid, a significant POW rescue operation.

Howard Stidham:

I did a four-year enlistment in the Marines, of which three years of it was aboard a battleship in the Marine detachment. And at the conclusion of that enlistment in 1940, I got out and enlisted in four years in an inactive Marine reserve. And I was working for Lockheed Aircraft shooting rivets on P-38s when Pearl Harbor happens. And so they called me back in right here at San Diego and put me in the first guard company. And I was a little unhappy about all that because I was all caught up in the emotions of the day of I wanted to go out and get with those little sleight-eyed guys.

And so after about a week, so that kid comes up in the barracks and says, "Tough-looking old major down here, interviewing guys for a new outfit. It's going to get a lot of action." And I said, "Where is he?" So I go down and interview Colonel Carlson, or Major Carlson then. And he just asked some questions. The one I particularly remember was that he said, "Corporal and I, you're in charge of four people and your mission is to blow up this bridge. And on the way there, the other guys get hit. What are you going to do?" I gave him the right answer, I guess, "I'm going to try to blow it up myself, Sir."

He was a really type of Marine everybody admired. We knew of his reputation and some of these things he did with the Chinese Eighth Route Army and all that sort of thing. So we would've followed the old man anywhere. We really admired him.

And a day or two later, I'm out at Camp Elliott and I formed A Company, first company in the battalion and we stayed around there for a day or two and then we packed everything we had in our packs and walked down to Jack's Farm, which is the present side is at Bakerfield out here in Mission Valley. And we pitched our Schiller halves out on the flat and ditched them for the rain and shoveled out the chicken house so they could... cooks have a dry place to set up the ranges. That was our home for the next three months.

Well, there's a lot of physical stuff of course, but then shooting different weapons. And actually, we did some training on the APDs too. Went out to San Clemente Island and made some landings. It was a tough go, and we learned a lot about living off the land. That's the type of background he had in China. And we could exist for a while with a sock full of rice and a piece of salt pork. You'd be surprised how many meals you can get out of a sock full of rice, but that's the type of thing we went through.

Well, there were some people like me who had a few years in the corps and there were some of the old NCOs 16, 18 years in the corps, but most of them are sort of young recruits, hadn't been in very long.

When we first got to Hawaii, we were under the control of Admiral Nimitz. And at that time, I think we arrived there in May and they knew that the Japanese were on the way to Midway. Of course, they couldn't tell anybody. The C and D company of our battalion were rushed out to Midway as to augment the ground forces there. We stayed there. I was with A company.

But while the battle of Midway was going on, while we were aware of all those, but then when the battle turned out to be a real victory for us, it was then that Admiral Emmett started thinking in terms of getting a little offensive. Because up until that time, everything was bad, all the news was bad where the Japanese were moving out all through the Pacific and nothing went right for us. And so that's when they started planning, I think for the Solomons invasion. And this Makin Island was set up as a diversion for that. And we were selected for that, A and B Company. And we were going to go out to Makin, which if you don't understand quite where that is, if you drew a line between Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal, that would be about 3,000 miles. Now if you follow that line out 2,000 miles or two-thirds of the way there, you would be in the vicinity of the Makin Atoll. So the idea of the Makin raid was to not only eliminate the garrison and destroy their facilities, but it was to confuse the Japanese hopefully as to our intent down on that area and it might divert some of their people from the Solomons. And so that's the way it was set up. They didn't tell us where we were going, we didn't know anything about it. They showed us some drawings of the island and the buildings and the piers and things like this. But we went out to Barbers Point, was a mighty big surf and we played around out there with rubber boats and they laid out some of these buildings and things on the beach and we rehearsed all the things we were supposed to do, even we all had to spend some time on submarines that were out at that time practicing with some of the destroyers just to get familiarized with submarine life. It was quite a bit different.

And we had to cut the companies down because a submarine is limited on space and our companies were about 125 men. For two companies, A and B Company were the two that was going to make the raid, you couldn't put 250 men on these subs. So they actually got each company down to about 105 by eliminating first the mortar section. They decided they probably didn't need a mortar section and then they dropped people that were sick or injured and things like that and didn't replace them. And so they got where they could cram us all in there. And so the two submarines we were going to go on was the Nautilus and the Argonaut. They were a little different, but they were two of the biggest subs in the Navy. And the Argonaut was an old mine-laying sub and they had taken out a lot of the mine gear and the mine storage area, made more space that could stack troops into.

And so I was billeted in the forward torpedo room and they had gone in the yard and constructed two by fours, some bunks up through there. Probably got crammed about 20, 25 of us in the forward torpedo room. And the rest of them, just a little bit of everywhere. A lot of things they had to learn about submarine life, of course. One very important thing was how to flush the head. Totally different. There's a danger there, too, blowing it back. So you paid a lot of attention and got it right the first time.

After they got us all on the sub, we made a rehearsal first there at Barbers Point at night. And Admiral Nimitz was out there, I know and I guess he wanted to see if we could really do it before he sent us out. It turned out pretty good. He thought for a minute that the whole thing was a bust, but first thing he knew, there was a bunch of Raiders standing around him so he was convinced.

So we left, I think right about the time they were landing in Guadalcanal and which was the 7th of August. And we landed on Makin on the 17th. So it took about 10 days to get there. Those old diesel boats didn't go very fast. And when we got there, everything seemed to go right out at first. We got up early in the morning and we were up topside, but the first thing that happened was that the weather was up a little. Been raining squalls and the seas were running a little higher than normal and everything, but we got the boats out inflated, got in them.

First bit of trouble was out of 22 outboard motors, only two would work. Now the general plan was, you see, for the submarine was going to be at a precise spot that they could determine by their navigational equipment and everything. And on signal, each company would take off at a different compass bearing and we'd all both land at different places about simultaneously and then we would end up sort of involving them in a kind of a pincer's movement or double envelopment. And each unit had all these different things we'd rehearsed, different buildings, had it memorized what the place looked like. And so the first thing we run into was this outboard motor thing. And so we couldn't do this bit. And so now, we're sitting out there and it ain't going to be long until daylight. So now, we're really in trouble. So Colonel Carlson just passed the word that everybody just follow him, we just drift in. And so that's what we did. And we landed on the beach in the darkness undetected, but just hopelessly mixed up the two companies and trying to get a little bit organized in the darkness. And some dumb-dumb lets a burst from his BAR go with a tracer yet. So there goes the element of surprise.

So now something has to be done real quick like naturally. And so we didn't even know where we were on the island, see. Because you couldn't tell from the seaward side, it is all light. You cross over onto the lagoon side, which wasn't very far, you've got buildings and piers and things of that type that we could identify. So he got ahold of my company commander and who was the only one available right at that particular point, I guess at that particular time. And he had him send some people across the island to find out where we were. And we were at a place we recognized as a government wharf and government house. And so then we were told to move the company down southerly direction until we run into the Japanese, which they did. And it took maybe about 500 yards and they met the Japanese coming up. And so what we had was A Company and B Company's area running this unrehearsed sort of offensive, and still we had some people in B Company in their area trying to carry out their little assignment that what it amounted to is that two groups come together, we spread out across this island. See, it was only about two or 300 yards wide. It's all it is, but it's maybe eight miles long. And that's significant when we get into some later things.

So the two sides shot it out pretty heavily there for a while and eventually it slowed down and we were getting sporadic sniper fire and things like this. But the heavy fighting was going. In my own particular case, I was armed with this 55 caliber Boys gun and I couldn't carry out my assignment that I rehearsed because we were all totally in the wrong place. So I had stayed near the company commander until the contact had been made and he sent me up on the right flank to... because they had problem with the machine gun there and to see if I could get in a few rounds of him. And I had gone up there, it's near a little place called Stone Pier and I plopped down behind a little grass shack and there was people around shooting, but I couldn't see anything to shoot at. And I began to thinking these little trigger-happy people here, they don't have anything to shoot. And about this time, there's a burst of gunfire goes through this little grass shack and out comes a kid named... I forget his name. Now anyway, kid's from Louisiana. His eyes were about like saucers coming, rolling out of there and he just said, "Oh, damn."

Anyway, this machine gunner started shooting at me. He'd seen me and he hit the ground in front of me and threw a bunch of dirt on me and I could see the misdirection he was. And I scooted around behind a little cement block. It was about a cube, about a one-foot cube block that was a corner, this raised grass shack. And that gave me enough protection, not complete protection, in any means. And he kept firing at me and he hit my heel and knocked off some shoe leather and he ricocheted one into my arm. The bullet didn't penetrate but it broke the skin. A little bleeding went on, but not too much. I think the bullet must have hit the ground on under my armpit. But he hit my canteen. And for a few seconds there, I was agonizing the thought that that oozing liquid was my blood. But anyway, that's about... that he finally quit shooting at me. I don't know where somebody got him or he figured he had me. So I ended up moving a little farther inland to a more secure place. I hadn't been there, but just a little bit. Somebody announced there was a Marine head upstairs where the machine gun had been. And so I moved up there and the Marine was a kid named Weigel from B Company and he crawled up there and tossed a grenade or two in there and there was... I'm sure he polished off the last ones or two, but I moved in there and there was this machine gun set up and both the gunners were dead and there was about 10 or 12 supposedly dead Japs laying all around there that had been out in the thing. So my curiosity got better on my better judgment, I guess. And I got on my knees, I was looking one of them over and just about that time he raised his up on his knees. So of course had a knife in my pack, so I whipped this out and surgically installed him a new air passage into his lungs. But that's probably the only thing that one that I really know of that I stabbed, but he was going to die anyway.

I might also add that during this time, there was a couple of Banzai attacks. I didn't see them but they were off to my left. I could hear them. And it sounded like a football squad coming out. It started off with one or two voices, then eight or 10 and all a sudden, and then there was a big, loud roar. And then you'd hear this tremendous surge of automatic fire. Never watched this.

So that's what had happened. You remember, see Carlson had equipped our company, a 10-man fire team... I mean a 10-man squad had three, three-man fire teams in it. And the fire team leader had an M1 rifle, which is semi-automatic. The other guy had a DAR and the other one had a Thompson submachine gun. So that was a lot of firepower. Japs had never run into anything like that before, I think. And so it really surprised them.

And so long after this, we still were getting sporadic sniper fire and things like this. But the shooting pretty much all died down. And then we began to get airplanes come over, of course. And we couldn't do anything while they were in the sky around us. All we could do was hide. And that was effective because they couldn't really see us specifically, so they just didn't know where to drop their bombs or strafe. So we never had any casualties at all from the airstrikes.

So this goes on for, well, up into early afternoon and then there was two planes landed on the lagoon and one of them was a small observation-type, bi-wing open cockpit thing. The other was a big four-motor flying boat. And we were told to bring them under fire, my Poise rifle. And I and Sergeant Carroll from B Company who had also had a Poise rifle over. And then there were two or three 30 caliber machine guns set up and we opened fire. And first, I was shooting at the big one. When I started, the small plane had got almost all the way in to the piers and the big one was out on the lagoon, slowly taxiing in, and that's what I was shooting at. But shortly after we opened fire, the small one caught fire and burned and I was shooting at the big one. My first shot, I know I'd fired, old Transport Mahakian was standing behind me with some binoculars and he told me my first shot was low, it skipped on the water, but we were firing at about 800 yards. And so I raised my aiming point and he says, "You're in the black." So I kept firing at that and I probably got off 30, 35 aimed shots. But shortly after we began the fire like this and the small plane caught fire, this big one which was slowly taxiing in suddenly... not suddenly, but slowly slowed down and then slowly turned around and it started moving back again, picking up speed for takeoff.

So all this time we were shooting at it, I'm sure what happened was that he saw that little plane up ahead of him, fire and burn, he's been taking hits and probably some casualties too. And so they decided the best they get out of there before they end up like that. And apparently, it crashed after takeoff. I didn't really see it, but enough people did see it. So I don't know who caused the main damage to it. It could've been Carol, could have been the other machine guns. And nobody knows what the cargo was. I don't know whether they had reinforcements in the air or not or anything else. So that's just something nobody will ever know.

And it turns out that during this time, we had actually eliminated most of the Japanese garrison, but we didn't know it. And probably the one thing that Carlson say didn't do was aggressively go follow up this first battle. And he's got a lot of critics up that afterwards. And that was a major problem, a major mistake, for sure.

However, the critics that come along in later years all had the benefit of something he didn't have, and that's 20/20 hindsight. And the thing is, we didn't have a very good picture of just how many Japanese were there. We had some intelligence but they just didn't know. And when we got there, one thing, in the daylight shooting going on, two ocean-going ships at anchor out here in the lagoon, you think, "God, what are they doing here? What did they bring, a battalion?" Those are the kind of things that could go through your mind.

Well, the fact that we'd had quite a bit more casualties too, see, than it was ever anticipated. The second platoon of A Company took the real hit for most of it. Of all those remains that were brought back here just recently, 10 of those were from out of the 19, 10 of them were for the second platoon of A Company. So you take 10 killed out of 30 men's platoon, you're talking disaster-ville ready. So at this point, we didn't really do anything.

And I have to, I say Carlson took a lot of criticism on that. And I have had to often wonder how sort of the things that goes through his mind why he did what he did or didn't do what he did was that we ended up with more casuals than we thought we were going to have. There was a lot of thought about what our opposition was. We just didn't know. And I have to feel that he concluded that if he went ahead aggressively and ended up with considerably more casualties, it was going to be an awful hard job to get off that island. I just think he finally must've concluded that his best chance of getting off was to withdraw that evening and go. I don't know that that's what he's thinking. Also, there's another factor too, I think that involved, it put a little pressure on him I'm sure, and I've never heard anybody ever say it, it's just a gut feeling I have, because I know that he had a personal relationship with Franklin Roosevelt. And here he's got the President's number one son with him that he is responsible for. So I'm sure that put a lot of weight to the burden that he was carrying, but it obviously was a mistake of not going ahead. If we had done that, we would've found out that we had already eliminated most of them, and it would've been a simple matter to do the rest and complete the mission and go.

So along late afternoon, early evening before dark, we withdrew back to our area where our boats were and we got reorganized boat teams, distributed the wounded equally or evenly over the things and we'd already... And there's one group that was designated to remain on the beach and be a covering force when we left. So after it got dark, passed the word and we launched our boats and then disaster really did strike. We trained in pretty high surf there at Barbers Point and we had utmost confidence in ourselves of getting through this surf even in just paddles. We didn't have motors. But it was just a difference.

I'm not a hydrologist, but my theory is that at Barbers Point, of course the bottom comes up slowly to the beach and these big rollers start building up and going up and finally they get up to the point where they break and go. Now that one roller that breaks, just as it's breaking here, that's the one that you really have to get through, because you come up with a flat bottom of that rubber boat about that time and you're going backwards with it. If you can hit him just as the time he is getting ready to do it or something you could get over or before. So it's a matter of timing. But here at Makin, we're not talking about a gradual rise on the ocean floor, we're talking about a reef. And these breakers just came in hardly any distance between them. These waves were not any higher or bigger than the one at Barbers Point, but they just come by a lot more quickly. There was less time in between them. And I think the idea of getting through that one big wave is a matter of perfect timing. And when there's a lot of space between them, well it's the window of opportunity is much greater. But here, it was much smaller.

This could explain why there were probably half a dozen boats or something did get through that night, get out to the sub, but most of us just ended up getting turned over and filled up with water and we're back on the beach again, dumping it out, getting ready and going and time after time. And then in the process, we're losing our weapons. And we kept this up for hours. As I say, probably half a dozen boats or maybe 60 people or more had got out. And of course, they didn't get really back on the sub that they came on necessarily. They just got on whichever one was available. We kept going for hours. And all this time, we had this mental picture that the Japanese still had a combat capability. Now, things were really desperate because most of us weren't even armed anymore. And then this mental picture was reinforced by along around midnight or 11:00 at night or something, there was a four or five Japs come along and got into a shootout with a kid named Hawkins from B Company and he killed about four of them with his Thompson and they shot him up kind of bad, a couple of shots in the chest. He survived. But anyway, that reinforced the idea that they still had this combat capability. And so kept going and going at night and everybody... exhaustion was finally just setting in where you couldn't do it anymore.

And by now, there's a talk that we don't hardly any of us have a weapon and we're on an island with a bunch of Japs, we're going to end up as prisoners of war, we're going to have to surrender. And it sure wasn't anything that we would look forward to, by any means. But I finally got so tired, probably 3 in the morning or something, that I just didn't care. And I laid down one sleep, some rocks. And I woke up probably just about daylight or a little after and I saw some people launching another boat for another try. And I went, "Well, I'll go give it another shot with these guys." And I go down and get in the boat and we made it out that time. Got through that first big wave. And so I did that, I knew we had it. And the only person in the boat that I remember for sure on that one was Jimmy Roosevelt. I came out in the same boat he did that morning. And then probably we weren't back aboard the sub until about maybe 10 minutes or so until the first planes come over, and we had to dive. So we had to stay submerged all the next day and we didn't know what was going to happen to those other people. They got the reports from a periscope depth that they saw some fires ashore and everything. And finally I guess what had happened that the 75 or so that were still ashore or had all around looking for somebody, found out that they really didn't have an enemy left in the island. So then they set about doing what we came there in the first place for, they destroyed all their stuff and run down a few stragglers that they were hiding out. And they started concocting, jerry rigging some kind of a craft to get back out to the sub the next night. And what they did was they carried up three rubber boats across from the seaward side to the lagoon side and they're going to go out through the opening in the lagoon. And then they had a couple of wooden native outriggers and they lashed all these things all together. And a couple of kids that worked on some outboard motors most of the day, had some mechanical building, got a couple of them to run, and they had come on to at least two of the rubber boats and they got all these people in this thing, and by nightfall, they make contact with a sub with a flashlight and Morse code. And they came out that second night very slowly and probably got aboard. We picked them up in the subs probably about 11:00 that night. And of course, there were some people on the Argonaut that came out on the Nautilus and vice versa, and there was just no way of accounting for anybody.

And it took us maybe another than nine, 10 days to get back to Pearl Harbor. And we weren't so enthralled about our accomplishments because the thing had been such a bad situation, such a classic example of Murphy's Law that when we pulled into Pearl Harbor, they finally passed the word all Marines topside. But we scrambled up topside because we hadn't seen the sun for 10 days, I guess, a week at least. And we were surprised as they were going down through Battleship Row there that the Navy had all their crews aft and the band was playing on the Marine Hymn and up ahead on the pier was a big Marine honor guard presenting arms. And there was all the brass and Navy brass and Honolulu including Admiral Nimitz welcome us home. And so we began to realize that good God, we're a bunch of heroes.

So we got in and it was kind of treated that way. We were put up at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with the sailors. The Navy had taken over the Royal Hawaiian and using it as an R&R center for the submarine crews that was doing these 60-day war patrols off Japan. And so we're the only Marines that ever got up there, I guess. Supposedly we're going to be there a week, but we're only there about four days. And they pulled us out of there and we started loading ship to go down to the south.

But anyway, there were 30 people that went out with us that didn't come back. And we couldn't really account for any of those until we got back. And we have company formation. First Sergeant reads off the name of everybody that didn't come back. And if two people could say they saw him dead, he was listed as KIA. If they couldn't, he was listed as MIA.

So what we had, I think when was 18, listed as KIA and 12 as MIA. So no one knew what happened to the people because they could have drowned, anything could have happened. And it turns out that of course, as you probably know, nine people were left there and Carlson had gotten a good bit of criticism on that one too, I think. But I think that was unjustified because no one knew that anyone had been left there. First I knew about it was 15 months later while we were on Bougainville, when the Second Marine Division went into Tarawa, an army unit went into Makin and at that point they found out that there were nine Marines had been left at Makin and then they were surrendered to the Japanese a few days later and they were taken to Kwajalein.

Now later on after they invaded the marshals, they found out that from a native Marshallese that these guys had been executed by the Japanese. But why they got left there, I've come up with a scenario that I think may the only answer to it and that sadly enough, they did it to themselves. They just made a fatefully bad decision. And first off that morning, like say when I got off, about that time, there was a boat from the Nautilus with five Marines in it, a Sergeant Allard in charge and they were volunteers. They were going to take the boat back in, just outside the breaker line, try to get a line inside, help some boats get back through the breakers. Well, they got caught out there where the first jet planes coming over, and they were observed by periscope being strafed. Nobody ever saw them again, so they was missing and presumed to be dead.

But I know what I would've done if I was out there, and the strafing run was coming in on me. I'm going to be three feet below the surface. Well, if the strafing run's over. I'm sure that's what they did. And they survived, but the boat didn't. They ended up back on the beach and they found... run into another three or four stragglers that was similar to mine. And you got to remember this mental picture at that time still was we're going to end up as prisoners of war. And they brought it together thought, "To hell with this straggler, we can do that anytime. Let's go on down the island and see if something might break." I'm sure they had to think of something like that because in desperate situation, people do desperate things. And nobody saw any of these people all the next day.

Remember now there was 75 or so that are doing all these things I've described. They're burning up all the gasoline, destroying their radio stuff and everything and getting the festival together to go out that night and everything. And none of these guys that are missing were seen by any of these people. They just weren't there all that second day. And so they had to have gone down the island. Now see, remember this island was only two and 300 yards wide, but yet it was something like eight miles long. And the part where we were in was down on one end. So there was another six miles or so. They could have gone up that way and been all that second day. And I'm sure that's what they did. It's terrible that a thing happened, but I don't know how anybody could have prevented it.

When we got back, as I said I think earlier, we weren't exactly proud of our accomplishments. Too many things had gone wrong. We were proud of the fact that we could have pulled this off even after a textbook example of Murphy's Law. But when we got back, we realized that this was a big event and you know how the media is, they jump in on something like that and have a real circus. And that's what happened. It was a media circus. And so it sold a lot of war bonds. Nobody understood at that time, I think, just how hungry the American public was for some good war news. And here were some guys that went out and shot it out with the Japs and came home and everything and all of a sudden it was a great thing.

Our accomplishment, as far as winning the war, is a very minimal, but it was a great thing for the home front. And in that regard, I heard that when Carlson turned in his after battle report, Nimitz gave it back to him and told him to rewrite it and eliminate all references to any surrender attempt. And I know that that was not done to cover up for anybody or anything like that. What it was done was to keep this beautiful news on the home front going, sold an awful lot of war bonds. So it was after a number years later, Carlson is now dead or something that people who got into this, and of course then, as I say, with people with 20/20 hindsight, very critical of him, but none of the people in his unit were.

After our four days at the Farmers... I mean at [inaudible], we started loading ship and we went down to Espirito Santo in the New Hebrides group and set up a camp there. And see along about early November, the Navy had thought that they would build a second airfield on Guadalcanal out of Aola Bay, which is about 30 miles down the beach from Henderson Field. And so they sent some engineers or somebody in there, but they sent two companies of a Second Raiders in to kind of spearhead it. And then when they got ashore, looked it over, they thought it was too swampy. There's no way they could build an airfield there. So then Carlson he had ashore was directed by General Vandegrift to scout out all that area, that 30 miles between Aola Bay and Henderson Field and get a report on what the Japanese strength stuff was. So they started that and then two more companies joined and this went on. And being an A Company, we were the last company to join. And we joined for about the last 10 days. But they did a real great job of finding out for the general that there really wasn't any serious Japanese threat, that area. They engaged a lot of Japanese units and had a lot of firefights and killed maybe a couple of 300 of them at that point, but I just didn't have any... Well, they found out basically that there was no threat there.

Interviewer:

Was this the Long Patrol?

Howard Stidham:

Yes. So it took about 20 days for them doing all this to get up to Henderson Field, and that's when our company joined. And then we went inland and around the back country, around the perimeter of Henderson Field and on up north and around the [inaudible 00:49:29], come out that way. It took about 10 days doing that. And we went up the Tenaru and crossed over this high ridge between that and the Lunga, down on the upper Lunga River. And at that point, I think they had probably one of the most spectacular engagements of all. There's a Sergeant John Yancey's squad had the point that day as they walked down into this little valley alongside the river and is kind of a wet, miserable afternoon and as they're walking down there and the visibility probably not more than 10 to 20 yards. And they walked right into a major jet, Bivouac. I mean the Japanese had no security out. I mean, I guess they'd probably been using that place for two or three months and hadn't even seen a Marine even close to it. So they were totally surprised that their arms were stacked somewhere. The Marines all had around in the chamber and their finger on the trigger. And so they just started blasting away and the Japs started running and they ended up killing about 75 of them and never even lost a man. And some of them got away and they killed a few each day after that.

We stayed there for about four days patrolling out of there. I know one patrol, we found a 75 Pack Howitzer up on a ridge there that was one of the ones that were the called Pistol Pete anyway, that kept lobbing some shells down onto Henderson Field every now and then.

One of the guys, the guy climbed up a tree there and they had a platform up in the tree and the observer could see Henderson Field from there, so the spotters that... Anyway, I say about four days in there. Then Carlson got word from the general to secure his operation and come in. And so he sent the companies. The three companies that had been there the longest, he sent them back the way we come. The rest of us went up over Mambula, or Mount Austen as everybody calls it. It was the highest point on the island. And so we took off there that one morning and we climbed... Out platoon had the point. We climbed and climbed and I mean it was tough going. See, Carlson of course was right up there with Lieutenant Miller, our platoon leader, and the old man being right there in the advanced party scene. Nobody suggested we take a break. So we kept going. And the time we reached the top, that column was strung out a bit and Lieutenant put the point squad out to a security around there and he comes looking around for some more people to go through this top of this mountain because there was a lot of evidence of digging and things though the Japanese had been using it obviously. And so looking for some people to go through there, all he could come up with was Corporal Porsche and me and his platoon sergeant and a runner. So the five of us went through this thing, it was poking the muzzles down on the holes and everything. It was pretty tense 20 minutes or so. And then we got over the other side where the trail started down and nothing. So he leaves Bob Porsche and I there as security, if you have anything coming that way. And he goes back to report to the colonel it was all clear.

And just about time he got back there, there was about a 20-man jet patrol had come in from another direction and all shooting began. And Lieutenant Miller and Sergeant Mohawkian and the three other guys had gone through there with us all got hit. And here was Bob Porche and I out there all by ourselves and all this shooting going on back. It's pretty lonesome out there, I believe you. But eventually, they ended up killing all the Japs and we ended up... But now see, these other guys all got hit and now I'm the platoon leader. And I remember, I'm trying to get the platoon all organized in for the defense that night. And I'm thinking about my canteen. I haven't taken a drink all day. I got a full canteen. And about this time along comes the corpsman and he is looking for some water for the wounded guys. He hadn't had much luck. So I remember I pulled that canteen out. I looked at it, and I went... So I spent all the next that night and next day dry, two days without any water before we finally got out.

We didn't have any trouble that night. Next day, B Company moved out in advance and first thing... They ran into some stragglers there, the Japs and they lost a couple of guys. And so part of the way out, Lieutenant Miller died and had to bury him on this sort of thing. But we got out and everything without too much trouble there. But it was just an awesome thing.

Earlier they mentioned Sergeant Major Vouza and he was with the Second Raiders this whole trip, and had maybe there was probably 50 natives. And they were really a major contribution to our successes on that. They carried our heavy gear, radios and things, carried wounded, went on resupply patrols. There was about 10 of them were maybe used as scouts, but they were familiar with the area, they knew the trails. They could guide us in areas that we didn't know anything of. They give us maybe advanced information on some jet presence. So there was just a very important part of the whole thing. And Vouza was the guy that ran it.

Interviewer:

You mentioned you were at Bougainville. Bougainville?

Howard Stidham:

Yeah.

Interviewer:

That was the last Raider campaign, I understand.

Howard Stidham:

Yes.

Interviewer:

Can you talk about what you did there?

Howard Stidham:

Well, we were attached to the Third Regiment and we landed on Cape Torokina. And it was a totally different thing. It was I guess a typical Marine kind of landing. But the whole area at this Cape Torokina area was just kind of a big swamp. And when you dug a foxhole there, if it was over a foot deep, you were in the water table.

And it's just, the first couple of days, we didn't do an awful lot, but the Raiders were used in what they called the road block up this Piva trail. It was established a holding place that any Japanese coming would have to come through this place. And the intelligence had said that within five days, they could bring a regiment from over on the other side of the island over the Numa Numa trail, down and come down the Piva trail. And so we expected to run in, have a sizable force show up within less than a week.

Our company, for example though, was sent out in this area about two miles on a patrol with a couple of the Navy engineers, the civil engineer corps. And they were the ones that were looking for some suitable ground to build a bomber strip. And they found it and they sent them back in and our company commander decided, "Well, we ought to stay here. This is easy. We don't have to fight our way back here again sometime later." And he's trying to get the division to move some people up. And the radio contact wasn't good or something. And we were there. And about this time, there's a few Japs coming along and we ended up shooting them. And then one of our lieutenants got killed by some other Japs and we had a little shootout. So I guess the company commander decided maybe this is the advanced party of that regiment coming in and we better get the hell out of here.

So we went to withdraw that night and got back down to the thing. But that was like on the 5th of November. And then on the 7th, I think, this regiment of Japs did show up. And we had quite a firefight for a couple of days there on this roadblock area. And first, it was the second that took attack. We were involved in that. And then the Third Raiders after the second day after a big artillery barrage and everything, they attacked and drove them out of there. But that was kind of what the Raiders were used for the whole campaign. It was stretched out for three months, but it wasn't all fighting. But we moved around an awful lot. We were highly mobile. And when they needed to fill a gap in some lines somewhere, well they called on us. So that's what we did.

Well, I am proud of being a Raider, but also I participated in, say, other parts of the war. And when the Raiders broke up, I went back to the States. I ended up in the Fifth Marine Division, so did a lot of other Raiders and an awful lot of paratroopers. They broke up the paratroopers that time. So the Fifth Marine Division was formed under ideal conditions where they had this tremendous amounts of combat veterans coming back or put in the division. Then you had the recruits, but it was a well-established division to begin with. So I felt that we was proud to be in the Raiders, but that was a good outfit. I was on Iwo Jima too.

When I ended up in the Second Battalion, 27th Marines, my battalion commander was a former officer in the First Raiders. My company commander served in the Second Parachute Battalion and the first sergeant and I, I was the company gunnery sergeant, were both from the Second Raiders and we had about another six or eight guys in the company, NCOs, were the Second Raiders and a lot of paratroopers who had been on the South Pacific thing. So we had a great nucleus there to form with. And so I was awful proud of that company too. So it was just with the Raiders, I bet I was proud of it and we had a lot of prestige. Probably some of it was maybe not quite deserved, but we enjoyed it. I think I remember on Bougainville sometimes, as I say, we moved around a lot. It'd be walking down a trail, going through another outfit and some little kid would look up and say, "Hey, what outfit?" "Second Raiders." And you could almost see that eyes got bigger and his mouth gaped open. He's a little bit awed by it, I guess. We walked a little taller.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was LtCol Howard Stidham. If you’d like to hear from more World War II vets, check out our full library of interviews at evergreenpodcasts.com

Thanks for listening to Warriors In Their Own Words. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We’re always looking to improve the show.

And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to rate and review.

Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.