'Gung Ho!': The Story of Carlson's Makin Island Raiders

When you watch GUNG HO!, you'll probably soon recognize how crappy the print is. I know it's been in the public domain and the copy recent shown on Turner Classic Movies was very dark and a bit fuzzy--and TCM usually shows the best print available.

As for the film, despite having Randolph Scott and some familiar faces (Noah Beery, Jr., Robert Mitchum and others), it's an amazingly straight-forward and simple film. The usual clichés and side stories, while still present, are much fewer in number and far more emphasis is placed on the training and combat. Additionally, I was amazed at how brutal the film was, as the Raiders were taught to fight very dirty and there was an amazing amount of blood for a 40s era film. It was uncompromising and direct throughout the movie.

The film itself is about a special unit within the Marines that were akin to the Army Rangers or a Special Forces unit. Apparently they were a real group and the film was made about their first mission in 1942--only a few months before this film was produced! Because it was so direct and simple, I really enjoyed the film. However, for lovers of Randolph Scott, while he's in GUNG HO!, his role is rather simple and quite unlike his later persona in Westerns.

By the way, although the film was pretty good, it featured one of the dumber war clichés as one of the soldier pulls a grenade pin with his teeth--a great way to rip out or shatter your teeth.

For more information about this raid (some of which is much more incredible than what is in the film), try http://www.usmarineraiders.org/makin.html.

Of the two Marine Raider Battalions made famous by their exploits at Guadalcanal and elsewhere, Edson's First and Carlson's Second, the Second was by far the ideologically weirdest. Both were thought of -- and thought of themselves -- as elite units, but in many ways they couldn't have been more different. Edson was a by-the-book military man who took marinehood several powers beyond the norm. They were looked at askance by other members of the military. Edson's emphasis was on combat performance locked into a rigidly authoritarian cast structure.

But Carlson's (here Thorwald's)background, temperament, and training methods were revolutionary, in a literal sense. Between the wars, Carlson had taken a kind of vacation from the Marine Corps and spent it studying the Chinese Communists and learning from them, especially the development of what they called "Gung Ho," which translates as something like "good public spirit" but has been degraded in meaning over the years until, when I was in the military, it had all the pejorative value of "chickenshit." Carlson was a committed leader, openly concerned about his men's welfare, what William James would have called "tender minded." His outfit, men and officers alike, lived together in both training and combat, suffered the same hardship, ate the same food, held bellyaching sessions in which anyone could say anything, good or bad, about anyone else, as close as you get to group therapy. The movie soft pedals much of this, and God forbid the word "communism" should be spoken aloud.

The Raider Battalion's most famous engagement was the raid of Makin Island in the Gilberts (pronounced more like "Moggin" than what it looks like). It wasn't the unqualified success the picture gives us. After the rubber boats reached shore and the attack was initiated, resistance increased and it looked like the raid would fail, so Carlson called for a retreat back to the boats. Unfortunately, as Carlson had foreseen, the heavy surf flooded outboard engines and overturned many of the craft, drowning numbers of men. As it turned out, however, the Japanese had more or less disappeared and the mission was accomplished, except that nine of the men who had not been killed in combat or drowned had gotten lost in the dark or wound up on another atoll. They were later rounded up, taken to Kwajalein and beheaded.

The raid did no long-term damage except to convince the enemy that the Gilberts would soon be invaded (which was true) and that fortifications should be reinforced (which they were). I love this movie. It has every cliché in the book. Brawling rivals, a Jewish sidekick called "Transpawt" by Randolph Scott, treacherous Japs, stupid Japs, Marines throwing knives with deadly accuracy, one of our boys can beat a dozen of theirs, explosions galore filling the air with flying balsa wood, bayonets, judo, interesting rifle-shot sounds, Japanese pilots giggling maniacally while they unknowingly slaughter their own soldiers -- ding hau!

The crowning moment: Colonel Thorwald begins one of those patriotic speeches about how we have to win the war, and the peace that will follow too, and turns mid-way through the speech and looks directly through the camera lens at the wartime audience, and the image on screen becomes a sinking ship flying a Japanese flag. Could there be anything better if you're seeking patriotic laughs from a movie? Shortly after Guadalcanal, the Raider Batallions were both disbanded, the Corps believing that since every Marine was elite anyway the Corps had no need for whole outfits of them.

A lot has been said about this picture's outrageous jingoism, and that's a valid point, but this wasn't intended to be a history lesson (although it's based on a true story), it was made as propaganda to further the war effort, and at that it succeeds. It's quite well made, the battle scenes are exciting and very well done, and it probably did what it was intended to do, which was to give the public something to feel good about; in 1943 the war wasn't going all that well for the Allies. Robert Mitchum was starting to get bigger parts about this time; he has a fairly substantial part here, and his laconic style is quite evident. Some of the dialogue is a bit difficult to get past (one soldier says he wants to join the unit that is being put together to raid a Japanese-held island because "I just don't like Japs"), and some of the heroics are a bit much, but overall it's no worse, and a bit better, than many of the war pictures to come out of Hollywood around that time.

This film, made in 1943, doesn't even try to hide its purpose. It's propaganda, pure and simple. Several scenes are shot and narrated in a documentary type of mode. The film was shot only months after the actual events took place. Randolph Scott was a good actor, but they threw this together so quickly that he didn't have time to do a decent job. Young (and I mean YOUNG) Robert Mitchum is the best actor in the film and he isn't nearly up to his usual standards. The story is good, and I believe that, given the language constraints of 1943, the film is as well written as it could be. The battle sequences are fair. There's a good bit of obvious choreography in the hand-to-hand scenes. Overall, judged against other films of its type, this one isn't too awful bad.

This fact-based war film (detailing the first ground assault on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor) is neatly divided into two parts – showing, first, the specialized training session of the carefully-chosen platoon (which is quite interesting) and the mission itself (displaying fairly standard heroics but well enough done nonetheless).

The film has been criticized for glamorizing what was essentially a band of cutthroats (Leonard Maltin even describes it as "a jaw-dropping experience"). Still, there was no doubt that any war picture made during this time wouldn't ram propagandist slogans down the audience's throat (witness Randolph Scott's final straight-into-camera speech); ironically, even if the latter was the film's nominal star, he's rarely involved in the action proper – being there mainly to co-ordinate things, and repeatedly instigate his men to kill every Jap on the island!).

The supporting cast is good, made up of veteran character actors – J. Carroll Naish, Sam Levene – and newcomers – notably Robert Mitchum; however, a fair share of the running-time is unwisely devoted to the romantic triangle involving a girl and two soldiers who happen to be half-brothers (one of them played by Noah Beery Jr.) – all of which has a quite deadening effect on the main narrative! Despite being a relatively early WWII film, the action sequences are surprisingly gutsy – though accentuated on occasion by obvious stock footage.