Merritt A. Edson
Merritt Austin Edson, Sr., known as "Red Mike", was a major general in the United States Marine Corps, First President of the Marine Corps War Memorial Foundation and First Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Safety & Vermont State Police.
Among the decorations he received were the Medal of Honor, two Navy Crosses, the Silver Star, and two Legions of Merit. He is best known by Marines for the defense of Lunga Ridge during the Guadalcanal Campaign in World War II.
He received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Marines in October 1917, and served in France and Germany in World War I. After the war he held several positions until going to flight school in 1922. After graduating flight school and being designated a Naval Aviator, he performed several assignments in Central America and China. It was in Central America where he received his first Navy Cross and the Nicaraguan Medal of Merit with Silver Star.
When World War II started, Edson was sent as the commanding officer of the Marine Raiders and earned his second Navy Cross on Tulagi. When his unit was sent to Guadalcanal, Edson led his men in fighting for which he would later receive the Medal of Honor.
After World War II, Edson held several commands until retiring from the Marine Corps on August 1, 1947. After retirement he had several jobs, including the director of the National Rifle Association of America.
Early years
Edson was born in Rutland, Vermont and grew up in Chester. After graduating from Chester High School in 1915, he attended the University of Vermont for two years. On June 27, 1916, he left college as a member of the First Infantry Regiment, Vermont National Guard, and was sent to Eagle Pass, Texas, for duty on the Mexican border. He returned to the university in September 1916, but joined the Marine Corps Reserve on June 26, the following year.Early career
Edson was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps on October 9, 1917. On September 30th of the next year, he sailed for France from Philadelphia with B Company of the 11th Marines, and arrived in Brest on October 13, 1918. Edson's first deployment had an inauspicious beginning, as he immediately became sick with mumps and spent the rest of the month in Brest's Camp Hospital #33 before rejoining B Company at Issoudun on November 9.This regiment saw no combat, but during the last six months of his European tour, he commanded Company D, 15th Separate Marine Battalion, which had been organized for the express purpose of assisting in the holding of a plebiscite in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Owing to the failure of the United States to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, this mission was never carried out.
Following the end of World War I, he was assigned to several positions that would qualify him for the high commands he was to hold in later years. He was promoted to first lieutenant on June 4, 1920, and spent two years at Marine Barracks, Quantico, Virginia, as the Adjutant-Registrar of the Marine Corps Institute, after which he was sent on a short tour in Louisiana guarding the mail. His interest in military aviation prompted him to apply for flight training at NAS Pensacola, Florida and he earned his gold wings as a Naval Aviator in 1922. Soon after, he was ordered to the Marine Air Station at Guam where he had his introduction to the semitropical islands of the Marianas with which his name was later to become so closely linked.
Plane crash
Edson's career as a naval aviator came to an ignominious end following his return to the continental United States in 1925. In March 1926, Edson received orders to the U.S. Army Air Service's Advanced Flying School at Kelly Field, Texas. By May, he had been found physically unqualified to complete the course due to defective depth perception, and sent back to the First Aviation Group in Quantico to receive a flight physical.Unable to complete Advanced Flying School, Edson received new orders for the Company Officers' Course scheduled to begin in September at Quantico. Meanwhile, the flight physical identified only a minor depth perception defect, in the flight surgeon's opinion too minor to affect Edson's flying. An inquiry among officers who had been in the course with Edson revealed he had been grounded after 44 hours of solo flight in DH's due to his poor flying abilities. When questioned about this directly, Edson admitted he had taken more than the usual time to solo DSs and F-5s in Pensacola.
The flight surgeon recommended that Edson be grounded for several months with weekly depth perception tests to see if the condition improved. Even after this period, Edson's commander, Maj O.A. Lutz banned him from flying O2B-1s. On 22 January, 1927, Edson tried to prove his flying ability by defying this ban to take an O2B-1 on a cross country flight to Hampton Roads. He crashed in Ark, Virginia.
The plane was "practically destroyed," and the subsequent investigation was damning. Edson claimed the crash was caused by a forced landing due to the motor cutting out, but this had happened over a field subsequently found to be large and flat enough for a landing in almost any direction. Edson admitted he overshot the field, but the investigation found even with the motor cut out the plane had enough power and elevation that he could have circled around to make another attempt rather than crash. Finally, in addition to violating the ban on flying O2B-1s, Edson had been restricted to the area of the field at the time of the flight.
Edson was grounded immediately, and received another flight physical on January 24th. In combination with the aftermath of Edson's rejection from the Kelly Field course, the flight surgeon had to conclude Edson's problems were mental rather than physical, writing "It would appear that he not only showed bad flying judgement, he lost his head." On February 18, Edson's flight orders were permanently revoked retroactive to the date of the physical.
Edson remained with First Aviation Group while completing the Company Officers Course. Following this, Marine Corps Aviation Section head Edwin Brainard requested that Edson be transferred to a line organization.
Marine Corps Supply Activity and Rifle Team
On April 14th, 1927, Edson received orders to the Marine Barracks at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. In Philadelphia, Edson's luck would finally change for the better. In short order, he became the ordnance officer at the Marine Corps Supply Activity, and in May received orders for temporary duty at Quantico assisting the Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol Team. This would become a regular arrangement for the next several years, with Edson repeatedly returning from the Depot of Supplies on temporary orders as either a coach or team captain.On August 16, 1927, while preparing for national matches at Camp Perry, Edson requested orders to Haiti as soon as the matches were completed. Though Edson noted he had a working knowledge of French and had not had foreign shore duty since July 1925, his request was denied. However, several months later, on November 14, Edson received orders to the to take over its Marine detachment.
Central America and China
During service in Central American waters, his detachment was ashore in Nicaragua during the period February 1928 – 1929. In command of 160 hand-picked and specially trained Marines, he fought twelve separate engagements with the Sandino-led guerrilla fighters and denied them the use of the Poteca and Coco River valleys. Here, he received his first Navy Cross for actions in which "his exhibition of coolness, intrepidity, and dash so inspired his men that superior forces of bandits were driven from their prepared positions and severe losses inflicted upon them." From a grateful Nicaraguan government, he was also awarded the Nicaraguan Medal of Merit with Silver Star.In September 1929, he returned to the United States and was assigned as tactics instructor to fledgling Marine lieutenants at The Basic School in Philadelphia. Upon detachment from that duty, he became ordnance and war plans officer at the Philadelphia Depot of Supplies for the next four years.
This ordnance duty was not new to him since he had been closely associated with the development of small arms marksmanship within the Marine Corps. In 1921, he had been a firing member of the winning Marine Corps Team at the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio. In 1927, 1930, and 1931, he served with the rifle and pistol teams as assistant coach. During the regional matches of 1932 and 1933, he acted as team coach and captain, respectively. Upon the resumption of the National Matches in 1935, he was the captain of the Marine Corps national rifle and pistol teams of 1935 and 1936, winning the national trophies in both years.
After short tours at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island and Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C., he was enrolled in the Senior Officers' Course at the Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Virginia in 1936. He was promoted to major on February 9, 1936. Foreign duty as operations officer with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, China from 1937 to 1939, enabled him to observe closely Japanese military operations.
His second tour of duty at Marine Corps Headquarters began in May 1939 when, as Inspector of Target Practice, he was in a position to stress the importance of every Marine being highly skilled with his own individual arm. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on April 1, 1940.
World War II
Raider battalion
In June 1941, he was again transferred to Quantico, to command the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, which was redesignated the 1st Separate Battalion in January 1942. The training exercises which he conducted in the succeeding months with Navy high speed transports led to the organization of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion in early 1942. This unit was the prototype of every Marine Raider battalion formed throughout the war. He was promoted to colonel on May 21, 1942.Colonel Edson's introduction to the Pacific theater of operations began with the overseas training of his raider command in American Samoa. On August 7, 1942, his raiders, together with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, landed on Tulagi, British Solomon Islands. Two days of severe fighting secured this strategic island in the Battle of Tulagi. After his battalion relocated to Guadalcanal, they conducted raids on Savo Island and at Tasimboko, on Guadalcanal. He was awarded a Gold Star in lieu of a second Navy Cross for his successful conduct of the Tulagi operation.