SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS: ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS - Section VI & Bibliography
SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS
ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS
1899-1923
SECTION SIX:
EPILOGUE
When Commandant John Lejeune changed the designation of the Advanced Base Force to Marine Corps Expeditionary Forces in 1922, it wasn’t an admission of defeat in terms of the concept, but an acknowledgement that the mission of the Marine Corps had again become greater than just landing on uncontested beaches and building advanced bases. When the General Board called for the creation of the advanced base outfit in 1900 and recommended sending Marines to the Philippines to defend their new bases beyond the seas, they recognized a utility in having a Marine Corps more strongly aligned with naval operations and logistics. As Marines successfully accomplished these tasks, the Navy and the White House began asking more of the service. Garrisoning Marines in overseas possessions, such as in the Philippines, Guantanamo, and in Panama offered successive administrations greater flexibility and rapid response to events such as the Boxer Rebellion and disputes with Central and South American countries. As the service grew in size and capability it became increasingly more likely it would be used in interventions on distant shores. Landings made by expeditions in Caribbean states revealed a need for the requirement of a much larger force than available for the Spanish war. With the advanced base mission, and the expeditionary missions, the Marines garnered increased technical and tactical competencies that would continue to mature through repeated exercise, and the development of formal landing doctrine.
The Advanced Base Force mission was a product of Admiral Dewey and the General Board. He had the experience of sitting on Manila Bay, after defeating the Spanish, as European navies gathered to influence the future of the Philippines. He realized his decisions would determine the balance of power in the western Pacific following the war. Dewey’s logistics train was never more than tenuous at best; as he awaited resupply from San Francisco, he used two ex-British colliers purchased for war service that shuttled between Mirs Bay near Hong Kong, and Manila. He used the available Marine guards from his cruisers to secure the Spanish arsenal and navy yard at Cavite and relied on the guns of the fleet to provide a limited capability to parry a counterattack on shore — until the Army arrived.
For the Marines’ part, the adoption of this new mission rested on the shoulders of a generation of Naval Academy graduates who had chosen commissions with the Corps. These men were raised in the age of the “New Navy” and indoctrinated in the writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan. Their education and peer influences meant they understood there was no better outfit available to establish advanced bases in support of naval operations. As they matured as officers, and matriculated at the Navy War College, and dined in Navy messes with their peers, they absorbed an understanding of the logistical challenges fighting the fleet created. In opposition, some older and more conservative officers who hadn’t been among those commissioned out of the Naval Academy and who manifested antipathy for the Navy. These officers gravitated towards the Corps’ assignments in “near” wars, scorned the Navy, and belittled brother officers who bought into developing the advanced base mission.[1]
A competition for control of the Marine Corps came down to who was selected to serve as Commandant. Most needed would be individuals who could most effectively lobby within the Navy Department; and with the General Board; and work with Congress; and work with the White House. The intermittent existential threat of amalgamation into the Army never really went away; periodic attacks from Navy officers in how the Marine Corps was run would continue. The recurring, prolonged deployments in ground wars and counterinsurgencies — what Pete Ellis referred to as “near” war expeditions — clouded the perception of the purpose of the Corps in the judgement of some. The naval nature of the advanced base mission, the eventual creation of the Fleet Marine Force, followed by the Mediterranean Afloat Battalion, Marine Expeditionary Units and Amphibious Ready Groups, have each set the Marine Corps aside from the Army; today, the Army is exploring ways it can deliver capabilities in the Pacific aligned with the Marines as defined by Force Design 2030 and EABO. Granted, the Army has long maintained doctrine and assets for amphibious taskings, kept on the shelf in case of emergency, but today it is the Marine Corps that is constantly deployed with the fleet.
The Advanced Base Force wasn’t just a product of some overarching strategic thinking by the General Board or a civilian Secretary of the Navy. A great part of it was in response to threats posed by the navies of Japan and Germany. With the purchase of the Philippines in 1899, the United States had a much larger interest in Pacific markets and a burgeoning interest in establishing and maintaining the “Open Door” policy. Forward based Marines from the Philippines joined Marines and Bluejackets of the Asiatic Squadron in the relief of Pekin from the Boxer Rebellion. In the Caribbean, Marines enforced the Roosevelt corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, policing the governments of neighboring countries incapable of balancing their books. All European powers, but the Germans in particular, challenged the control of the proposed Panama Canal; Germany was dangerously aligned with an increasingly unfriendly Mexico caught up in rebellion and civil war. Marines repeatedly formed expeditionary units to protect American interests across these countries, and when the Advanced Base Brigade was fully constituted, its regiments responded to emergencies in Mexico, Santo Domingo, and Hayti. The Advanced Base Force was designed to support the Navy’s operational and logistics challenges in foreign waters; with time it became a more flexible and powerful implement in support of U.S. foreign policy and naval strategy.
While the fighting in France entirely subsumed the Marine Corps public persona
from 1917 until 1919, the service continued in its expeditionary missions to Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Haiti. Some historians have made the claim that the Advanced Base Force disappeared during the war, but the evidence shows that the mission remained relevant to Navy operations, particularly in the Caribbean, and theoretically in the Adriatic. More importantly to Marine leadership, maintaining the advanced base mission’s presence in the service’s portfolio meant that it would set the service apart from the Army.
Marines familiar with the threat posed to U.S. interests in Asia recognized that the war plans being shaped by the Navy, PLAN ORANGE, required experience and an attention to detail if they were ever going to be effective in the conduct of a war spanning the Pacific.
The much- heralded military planning process, the Navy’s Plan Orange for war in the central Pacific, and the place of amphibious operations in comprehensive tactical and strategic war plans were championed by Marines.
– Edward F. Welch, Jr. RAdm, USN, President, Naval War College 1980
The Advanced Base Force was never actually called upon to establish a safe harbor for the fleet under wartime conditions, and in the context of the era, it’s largely overshadowed by the small wars and expeditionary missions that earned the service colors the many battle streamers that adorn it today. Fighting in Central America, across the various Caribbean islands, and on the fields and in the woods of northeastern France dominate the narrative of the early 20thCentury, but it was the development of landing doctrine at places like Subic Bay and Culebra, and in the classrooms of Quantico, that provided Marines he basis for competencies and capabilities in the Pacific and beyond. Fighting in France, and Haiti, and Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo developed the mythos — at unimaginable cost — the Marines carried across the beaches of the Central Pacific and Japanese home islands, in the support of a broader naval strategy. In the advanced base mission Marines developed the competencies to plan and execute that war.
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Writing dates: 6JUL25 – 14JUN26
Postproduction: 15JUN26-
No AI was used in the research or composition of this work.
[1] Smedley Butler and Lowell Thomas. Old Gimlet Eye – The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler. 1933. Kindle edition, and Kentucky Marine – Major Logan Feland and the Making of the Modern USMC. David J. Bettez. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington. 2014. Kindle edition.
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