On the evening of 12 August, a 25-man U.S. Marine patrol, led by Division D-2 Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge and primarily consisting of intelligence personnel, landed by boat west of the U.S. Marine Lunga perimeter, east of Point Cruz and west of the Japanese perimeter at Matanikau River, on a reconnaissance mission with a secondary objective of contacting a group of Japanese troops that U.S. forces believed might be willing to surrender. Soon after the patrol landed, a nearby platoon of Japanese naval troops attacked it and almost completely wiped it out.Zimmerman, pp. 58–60; Smith, p. 35; and Jersey, pp. 196–199. Goettge was one of the first killed. Only three made it back to the Lunga Point perimeter. Seven Japanese were killed in the skirmish. More details of the event are at Clark, Jack, "Goettge Patrol", Pacific Wreck Database and Broderson, Ben, "Franklin native recalls key WWII battle".
