How a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader

History Unplugged Podcast · May 13, 2025 · 55m

He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed tones. “This Major Carlson,” wrote one of the officers in a letter home, “is one of the finest men I have ever known.”

These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World War—and the Major Carlson they spoke of was Evans Carlson, a man of mythical status even before the war that would make him a military legend.

By December of 1941, at the age of…