Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

Pearl Harbor. For the Marines, it validated their claim of 'first to fight.' They were the first Allied ground force to take the offensive against Axis forces in World War II, a point they still take pride in today.

^{Marines take cover on the beachhead at Iwo Jima on February 19th, 1945, prior to moving inland. Iwo Jima was the largest all-Marine amphibious operation of World War II.}

^{OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO}

The Central Pacific: Winning the Bases with Vision

As early as the early 1900s, following their victory over Czarist Russia, the Japanese had dreamed of expanding their empire into China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands. This dream did not go unnoticed. Even before World War I, the U.S. and Great Britain had prepared contingency war plans against Japan, the American version being the famous War Plan Orange. The U.S. plan was based upon a long march across the Central Pacific, with the navies of the two nations eventually slugging it out in one huge decisive battle. Capturing and holding the island bases that would be needed was the task of the Marine Corps, which had been studying problems of amphibious warfare for decades.

Among the many Marines busy thinking about amphibious operations was Commandant Lejeune, who declared in 1922 that it was vital to have 'a Marine Corps force adequate to conduct offensive land operations against hostile naval bases.' By the 1930s the Corps had made great strides, including the publication of a Tentative Landing Operations Manual, which became the bible for early amphibious exercises. Marines worked to master new technologies that would allow them to carry out new missions. Landing craft, naval gunfire control equipment, and command radio equipment were key to the new job. Marines appear to have been the first aviators in the world to perfect precision delivery for aircraft bombs when they developed dive bombing. German officers observed Marine bombing demonstrations in the 1930s, which led to the adoption of the technique by Stuka dive bombers of the Luftwaffe.

It was in the Central Pacific, though, that the Marine Corps forged the amphibious assault doctrine that became its enduring tradition. In an 'island hopping' campaign, the Marines and Navy conducted a series of landings to take the bases originally designated in War Plan Orange. The drive across the Central Pacific began in the fall of 1943 at Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Although almost everything possible went wrong (incorrect tidal projections, poor communications and naval gunfire support, etc.), the main island of Betio was taken in seventy-six bloody hours. Despite the heavy cost in Marine and Navy casualties (1,113 killed and 2,290 wounded), much was learned, and the lessons paid for in blood at Betio saved lives later on other islands. Following Tarawa, the Marine/Navy team took the atolls of the Marshall Islands in a swift campaign in early 1944. Capturing Kwajalein and Eniwetok Atolls, they bypassed other Japanese-held islands in the chain.

The next campaign was to be the decisive battle that strategists on both sides had planned for almost half a century, the drive into the Marianas and the resulting naval battle of the Philippine Sea. Led by the legendary General Holland M. 'Howlin Mad' Smith in the spring of 1944, the joint Marine/Army amphibious force took Saipan, Guam, and Tinian in just a matter of weeks. This gave the Americans bases to launch B-29 strategic bombers against Japan, less than 1,500 nm/2,750 km away. From these bases, the war was taken to the Japanese homeland in an intense firebombing and mine-laying campaign. It also provided the bases that launched the atomic bomb strikes that ended the war.

More than the other services, the Marine Corps clearly saw its mission in World War II, and developed appropriate technologies and skills to accomplish its critical task of amphibious assault. This is in sharp contrast to the Army Air Force, which saw strategic bombing alone as the key to victory[4], and the Navy, which thought their battleships' guns would win the war.[5] The Corps understood that war is a joint operation — if we were going to win, all the services were needed — and this vision has continued into the postwar era. Always innovators, since the end of World War II the Marines have been leaders in the developments of helicopters, air-cushioned landing craft, and other technologies.

Iwo Jima: The Defining Moment

Following the mainly Army-led invasion of the Philippines in late 1944, the Marines were ready to begin their drive towards the home islands of Japan. They would need to be ready, because the next battle in the Pacific would be the toughest yet: Iwo Jima. A tiny pork-chop-shaped island (just eight square miles) in the Bonin chain just 670 nm/1,225 km from Japan, it was a vital link in the drive on the Japanese homeland. In February 1945, 71,245 Marines hit the volcanic ash beaches of Iwo Jima. There were 21,000 Japanese dug in, determined to fight to the death. They did. Over the next month, Marine and Navy casualties were almost 27,000, and virtually every Japanese on the island was killed. The American lives were not wasted, however, for the island runways began to save the lives of B-29 crewmen even before the fighting ended.

^{The defining moment of the Corps: the raising of the American flag by Marines atop Mount Suribachi on February 23rd, 1945. At this moment, then-Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal is said to have uttered, '…the raising of that flag means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years….'}

^{OFFICIAL U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS}

These dry facts are all well and good. But beyond them is a deeper reality: The battle of Iwo Jima was the single defining moment in the history of the Corps. Iwo Jima was an impregnable fortress if there ever was one, far tougher than anything along Hitler's vaunted 'Atlantic Wall.' The Japanese had spent over a year fortifying the island, including over eleven miles of tunnels which were dug mostly with hand tools! Japanese leaders clearly understood that its loss would put even American P-51 Mustang fighters within range of the home islands. For the Marines, Iwo Jima was going to be the last all-Marine invasion of the war, and they needed to take it, both for what it meant to the war effort and for what it meant to the image of the Corps. Iwo Jima was their island, and they meant to take it whatever it cost. They got their wish.

From the moment that they hit the black sand beaches, Iwo Jima was the hell of every Marine's nightmare, with death and horror behind every rock and in every hole. But tough as the Japanese and their island fortress was, the Marines and their Navy support offshore were tougher. Yard by yard, rock by rock, the Marines cleared the island. And in so doing, they wrote a unique page in American military history. In front of the full view of the wartime press, Marine units advanced against suicidal Japanese forces, taking everything that was thrown at them. Twenty-four Marines won the Medal of Honor on Iwo,[6] more than at any other battle in history.

Lastly, Iwo Jima gave the Corps and America its most famous and enduring World War II image, the raising of the American flag atop Mount Suribachi. When the flag was raised at 10:20 A.M. on February 23rd, 1945, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, watching from one of the offshore ships, turned to General Holland 'Howlin' Mad' Smith and said, 'General, the raising of that flag means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years.' Now memorialized with the magnificent memorial overlooking the Potomac River in Rosslyn, Virginia, this was the defining moment of the Marine Corps. More than any other aspect of the Marine ethos, the indomitable spirit of the Corps at Iwo Jima tells who they are. It says there is nothing Marines won't try if ordered to do so, and no cost they will not pay to accomplish that mission. Later, at Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, and the Beirut barracks, Marines remembered the sprit of Iwo Jima, dug in, and accomplished their missions, no matter what was asked of them. That is the Marine ethos defined.

'Send the Marines'