By any Marine's book, chill-eyed, cool-blooded Colonel Merritt Edson is the Corps's ideal fighting man, full of military judgment, cold nerve and a complete devotion to his troops. He is the classic professional.
On the Solomons, where he commanded a now famed battalion of raiders, 46-year-old Colonel Edson directed his troops with never a flicker of his eyelashes, never a rise in his impersonal voice. Men under fire were braced by his characteristic battle pose: arms folded easily over his lower chest, feet wide apart, eyes darting from under his steel helmet.
For what he did on Guadalcanal, Merritt Edson,...
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