Gung Ho and the Story of Marine Raiders

Title: Gung Ho and the Story of Marine Raiders

Description: Today we talk again with Professor James Early, certified American History Fanatic and host of The Key Battles of American History Podcast about the 1943 World War 2 film Gung Ho! This film in a way fairly accurately portrays the events of the Marine Raider Battalion led by Major Evans Carlson. James has a close connection to this movie, so you will want to find out!

Learn More About our Guest:
James Early host of The Key Battles of American History Podcast
Keybattlesofamericanhistory.com

You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:

www.beyondthebigscreen.com
Click to Subscribe:
https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feed
email: steve@atozhistorypage.com
www.beyondthebigscreen.com
https://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacy

Parthenon Podcast Network Home:
parthenonpodcast.com

On Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage
https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcast

Music Provided by:
“Crossing the Chasm” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Image Credits:
By The poster art can or could be obtained from Universal Studios., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28900379

Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Professor James Early of the Key Battles of American History Podcast and fellow member of the Parthenon Podcast Network. Links to learn more about James can be found at key battles of American history dot com or in the Show Notes. You can also search up James’ group American History Fanatics on Facebook.
You can now support beyond the big screen on Patreon and Subscribe Star. By joining on Patreon and Subscribe star, you help keep Beyond the Big Screen going and get many great benefits. Go to patreon dot com forward slash beyond the big screen or subscribe star dot com forward slash beyond the big screen dot com to learn more.
Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.
[00:00:00] Today we are going to talk about the 1943 masterpiece. Some might say world war II, film gung ho with the movie is very loosely based off of the Carlson Raiders Marine Raiders of the ILN of Macon. And we’re joined today by professor James early of the key battles of world war II. I am just fumbling all over myself today.
We are joined today by professor James early of the key battles of American history podcast. To discuss this, I guess you might say incredible movie, James. Thanks for coming on while we’re probably on your show too. So thanks for collaborating on this great movie. Going, whoa, gung ho gung ho, I guess let’s just start off because I’m sure most people are familiar with you, but why don’t you introduce yourself?
Sure. I am, uh, a part-time or [00:01:00] adjunct professor of us history at San Jacinto college, which is in Pasadena, Texas. That’s just south and east of Houston. And I’ve been teaching for oh gosh, six or seven years now. And I’m just a huge history fanatic. I’ve been a history level all my life. I started a Facebook group back in 2016 called American history fanatics, and it’s grown to about 5,500 people and we have some really good discussions there and posts about all kinds of things related to us history or American history.
I also have done a few podcasts. Probably most of the listeners have heard one or more of them, but I’ve done four limited series with Scott rank who also does the history of unplugged podcast and other great one. We did, uh, let’s see presidential fight club in 2017 key battles of the civil war in 2018 key battles of the revolutionary war in 2019 and key battles of world war II in 2020.
And then. [00:02:00] Finally says, uh, get out of here, do your own podcast in a polite way, but he gave me the opportunity to have my own solo podcasts. So I did. And of course, uh, one of the first things I did was invite Scott back on to be my partner again, just for awhile. We’re, we’re, I’m going to work with a partner, uh, but different partners, you know, just kind of mix it up a little bit, get different voices in there.
So the, the podcast is called key battles of American history. And my intention is to do several seasons and each season will be either. One particular war or on films. I’m a huge film buffets. I mean, you know that you are too. And so I like to talk about war films or just history related films in Gerald.
They don’t have to be about war necessarily, but so when I kicked off the key battles of American history podcast, I started with a series called key our world war one on film. And I brought in Sean MacGyver, uh, formerly of [00:03:00] the come and take it podcast. And Sean and I talked about 10 different world war, one movies.
Now, as we record this, we’re in July of 2021. We, uh, I’m doing a series on the, the Pacific war. So it’s key battles of the Pacific theater world war II. And then I’m going to do a world war two on film, Pacific theater, only at least for now series. And this will probably be part of that series. I’ll probably run this with that series.
So I’ve been really busy the last several years. Yeah. Let’s, let’s get this whole thing started by maybe just giving us the broad overview of this, make an island rate, but this film is based upon, okay. I can do that. Let’s let’s back up a step if I may though. And let’s just talk about what we’re Marine Raiders in general, not really that many people know anything about the Marine Raiders.
The Marine Raiders were America’s very first special forces unit. At least I’m going to call them that somebody will probably say, [00:04:00] wait, wait, what about so-and-so? But, but the first major. Special forces unit. They were conceived of actually, as early as the 1930s, there were two men in particular that were the, I guess the fathers of this idea, they were Lieutenant Colonel Marat Edson also called Mike Mike Edson.
And even more importantly, Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson, uh, both of these men were Marine officers who had served in world war one. And then they had spent time in some of the so-called banana wars in the central American and Caribbean islands during the 1920s and thirties. Uh, they’d served in Nicaragua.
Uh, see, I, I think that’s the only one Nicaragua I might be wrong. I know Carlson was also in the Mexican punitive expedition when Pershing was down there searching for poncho via, and both men had also been in. And they had observed, although they observed [00:05:00] very different things. The, uh, the well Mike Edson, he was observing the Japanese forces while the Japanese were fighting the Chinese.
I mean, he was, he was stationed with the Chinese, but he focused more on Japanese tactics and learning their system. Carlson was very different. Evans Carlson actually hung out with the communists. He was, uh, he actually got to know Moussa dong and some of his top leaders, he hung out, hung out with the eighth rout army.
And he was very impressed by the tactics used by the Chinese communist guerrillas to fight Japanese troops from the communist cross and learn the phrase gung ho, which means work in harmony or work together. And Carlson kind of adopted these kind of left wing political views. He was seen by many. Top brass of the Marine Corps is soft on communism.
I think that’s a phrase that was later brought into a currency, but, but he would have been, they would have applied that term to him. One, one Marine general said [00:06:00] he may be red, but he’s not yellow. So both of these men were very interesting and, uh, very interested in taking the tactics that they have to observe and applying them to the Marines and Carlson, especially came up with this idea, uh, that it would be helpful to have highly trained elite, special forces units who could sneak a shore on Japanese held islands because everybody knew even by the late thirties, the war with Japan was very likely.
So these guys, they would make raids and gather intelligence about the islands and Japanese forces there just kind of go in search and destroy, blow stuff up, raise as much hell as possible and then get out. And they would be modeled after British commandos. You could also think about today’s Navy seals, army Rangers, things like that, but they didn’t have those bags.
And, uh, there was some opposition to this idea, one very influential Marine commander, general Alexander Vandergrift, who was the overall commander of the invasion of Guadalcanal. He didn’t [00:07:00] like the idea of an elite unit within the Marines. He and others thought that all Marines relate forces. I mean, think about the Marines are supposed to be the, the tough guys.