SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS : ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS - Section V
SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS
ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS
1899-1923
SECTION FIVE:
MATURITY
As American interests, including the Haitian American Sugar Company and National City Bank of New York[1], worked to influence the Haitian government, they contributed to an instability that resulted in Vilbrun Guillaume Sam seizing control. After Sam executed a score of opposition dissidents, Haiti descended into the chaos and destruction of a violent insurrection. When Sam was deposed and beaten to death, Admiral William B. Caperton, USN, requested immediate assistance. The Navy Department sent the Marines. The expedition was composed of the Advanced Base Brigade headquarters, the 1st Regiment, and the Artillery Battalion, all commanded by Colonel Littleton Waller. As reinforcements to the fleet arrived at Port au Prince, assistant commandant Colonel John Lejeune, standing-in for Commandant Barnett while he was traveling, directed Waller to make sure that all Marines incapable of field duty, or with only six months remaining on their enlistments, were left behind.[2] Already in Hayti were the Marine guard from USS WASHINGTON, and a company of Marines that had sailed with them, as well as a Bluejacket landing force. The expedition’s mission was to stem the violence that had occurred in the wake of political assassinations. Five additional companies of the 2nd Regiment, and Marines from the Guantanamo garrison, joined Waller’s force as the new president of Haiti, Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave conducted negotiations with the U.S. envoy s. While not germane to the development of landing doctrine, a large part of this expeditionary unit became the core of the Garde d’Hayti — the Haitian gendarmerie. Integration of expeditionary Marines into a host nation’s police force cemented the public image and role of Marines serving beyond the seas, in a way not experienced by the Army or the Navy.
As could be expected, the better portion of Waller’s force were the specialist Marines of the Advanced Base Brigade, who were taken because they were available. In a story as old as the ABF, these Marines would have otherwise been training in their vocation at League Island, moving and assembling naval guns, practicing communications, maintaining equipment, and taking classroom instruction. Commandant Barnett stated,
“Owing to the interruption in the training of the fixed defense force, its efficiency as an advance base organization will be materially interfered with.”[3]
Because of this diversion, created by the Navy itself, Commandant Barnett requested a further expansion of the Corps by an additional 3,000 men to fill the ranks for expeditions.
The Mexican Revolution morphed into a civil war following the American withdrawal from Vera Cruz. Pancho Villa’s murder of American citizens in Mexico, and cross-border incursions forced an American response. On the west coast, three companies of Colonel Joseph Pendleton’s 4th Regiment shipped out from San Diego for Guaymas on the west coast of Mexico, aboard USS COLORADO. After six weeks they returned to southern California; the mere presence that a battalion of trained Marines had, just in sitting off the coast, may have had a chilling effect on local unrest. In the years following Vera Cruz, the presence of American warships offshore, teeming with embarked Marines, telegraphed American resolve and power in foreign countries.
Organizationally, Commandant Barnett’s ties within the Navy bore fruit when he was made an ex-officio member of the General Board of the Navy. The Board hadn’t had Marine representation since Commandant Elliot’s tenure. In January of 1916, the service designated the Marine Barracks, San Diego, California, as the permanent station of the West Coast Expeditionary Force. And the “Advanced Base Brigade” designation for Marines on the east coast became just the “First Brigade” when they deployed to the Caribbean. Advanced based specialists assumed other duties, those of a common rifleman, when deployed for expeditionary duty in Haiti. Some Marines who had deployed to Haiti were re-deployed to Santo Domingo City to protect the consulate and legation there. As the Marines had mastered the advanced base mission, the Navy and State Department saw a ship full of fully trained and equipped Marines as a useful tool in foreign policy.
Despite small numbers of Marines landing in Santo Domingo, it became clear to the U.S. that the entire country would have to be occupied to pacify the unrest. Additional Marines redeployed from Haiti to Santo Domingo in April of 1916. Captain Frederick Wise led several unopposed landings, at the capital, Santo Domingo, and Monte Christi, and secured the positions with only a little fighting. Undermanned from the start, Wise’s force was reinforced by a company at a time, as they arrived from ships of the fleet, and the United States, and command passed to more senior officers as they arrived. On June 1, Marines landed at Puerto Plata and Monte Christi, under the cover provided by the guns of the fleet. Monte Christi was an unopposed landing, but at Puerto Plata the Marines took fire as their boats approached the beach. The Marine guard from USS RHODE ISLAND, “landed through surf under heavy fire and participated in the attack on and capture of Fort San Felipe, Puerto Plata…” Captain Herbert Jay Hirshinger was shot in the head, and died of his wounds aboard USS SACRAMENTO. Between Haiti and Santo Domingo, the service suffered seven killed, and thirty-three wounded during 1916.
Landing men under fire was not unheard of on landing parties, but wasn’t a condition fully accounted for at that time. Boats landed in sequence, gunfire supported the movement to shore, and getting the greatest number of Marines ashore as fast as possible was the goal. Whaleboats towed in train of motorized launches were still the only available means of “landing craft”. And while the flat-bottomed boat with a front ramp had been employed by Imperial Japanese forces for years, it would be decades before the United States adopted such craft.
And at some point, expeditionary landings became an umbrella for everything not encompassed by an advanced base operation. Today, the use of the term “expeditionary” conjures up images of large troop transports depositing battalions of troops en masse on piers in a foreign harbor; certainly, some Marine expeditions entailed this. Alternately, boats landing through the surf under the threat of fire in the occupation of a recalcitrant neighbor might be “expeditionary”. Marines serving at sea, either on transports or on warships, had to be capable of handling boats and fighting from them; as landing doctrine developed, the gap between advanced base and expeditionary landings continued to narrow. Eventually the advanced base competency would become just a tool in the landing operation toolbox.
In his annual report, Major General Commandant Barnett reported “Owing to the necessity of utilizing the companies of the fixed defense regiment of the advance base for infantry duties in Haiti and Santo Domingo, all advance base training during the past year was suspended.”. In light of the European war, he also called for training with machine guns, and singled out aviation duties as essential to the advanced base force. Marine aviation was authorized to ten officers, and forty enlisted men in support of the naval services.
“The naval appropriations bill for the fiscal year ending June 20, 1917 contained provisos increasing the Marine Corps by 255 officers and 5,034 enlisted men. The establishment of a large Marine Corps post on each coast as training stations for its expeditionary forces has now become necessary.”[4]
Members of the Marine Corps Association, founded at Guantanamo during advanced base exercises five years earlier, turned to pen and paper to demand an understanding of the profession of arms within the Marine Corps. In 1916, the Marine Corps Gazette began publishing articles written by and about the Marines. As Proceedings Magazine was to the United States Naval Institute, the Gazette was to the Association. John H. Russell composed “A Plea for a Mission and Doctrine”; John Lejeune gathered his thoughts, and those from Earl Ellis’ lectures delivered at the Naval War College, and wrote “The Mobile Defense of Advance Bases by the Marine Corps” in the Gazette during its first year.[5] As much as he saw the Advanced Base Brigade as the raison d’etre of the Corps, Lejeune had a vision of a Marine Corps that was more than that narrowly defined mission,
“In the event of a war with a non-naval power, our duties, if organized into regiments and brigades for Advance Base training, would be that of the advance guard of an army. The Marine Corps would be the first to set foot on hostile soil in order to seize, fortify, and hold a port from which, as a base, the Army would prosecute its campaign.”
In his annual report to the Secretary of the Navy, Commandant Barnett defined the requirements for the purchase of “Marine Corps Maneuver Grounds and Barracks”. With the unprecedented peacetime expansion of the Navy, and its requirements for space to train new sailors aboard their current Navy yards, the Marines were being squeezed out. Criteria for the new post included proximity to “the great highway”, piers for transports, rail service, acreage to construct rifle and artillery ranges, varied terrain, and close-by healthy diversions for Marines posted there. To train the Advanced Base Force required a location some distance from the activities aboard Navy yards, and a separation from operations exigencies.
WAR
Since the summer of 1914, the United States watched Europe devour itself in its latest, and most terrible war. President Wilson won a second term in the White House campaigning on keeping America out of war, but German unrestricted submarine warfare finally drew the U.S. into hostilities in 1917. That fall, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels updated the status of the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Advanced Base Force,
“The advanced base training is going on at the marine barracks, navy yard, Philadelphia, where the troops are being exercised in the drills necessary for advanced base work, including infantry drill, heavy and light artillery, mining, signal drills of every variety, and aviation. Two regiments of Infantry for advanced base work are being trained at Quantico, Va., and the Artillery battalion of the advanced base force is also being trained at that place.”
On August 29, 1916, the service was authorized an increase “from 344 officers and 9,921 enlisted men to 587 officers and 14,981 enlisted men.” On March 26, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed an executive order further increasing the Marine Corps to 693 officers and 17,400 enlisted men; only twenty years earlier, in 1896, the service had only 76 officers and 2,600 enlisted men.[6] The adoption of the advanced base mission, and numerous expeditionary deployments the service conducted between 1898 and 1917 created a Marine Corps that was considerably more sophisticated than the guard force that served the Navy aboard battleships and navy yards.
Congress declared war on Germany in April of 1917. The immediate effect on the Marine Corps was a continued, unprecedented expansion. More Marines meant acquiring training grounds where they might mold recruits. When the Secretary of War, Newton Baker, requested two regiments of Marines to serve with the American Expeditionary Force in May of 1917 the Marine Corps needed to find a base.
Popular history paints the relationship as fractured from the beginning, perhaps stemming from Commandant Barnett’s assertions that it was his personal initiative, and Naval Academy ties, that allowed the Marines to find shipping bound for France when the Army denied them berthing aboard Army transports. Friction between the services may have existed, but there’s no record that the AEF’s commanding general, John J. Pershing was hostile to Marines serving under the Army.[7]Pragmatic minds within the Marine Corps, who weighed the benefits of being part of the major American land effort, most likely decided that accepting the Army table of organization, Army uniforms, Army weapons, and Army command far outweighed the Marines’ maintaining idiosyncrasies endemic to being part of the Navy Department.
“When the United States entered the World War, the Allied fleets had already obtained control of the sea except for the submarine menace. There was not available naval mission, therefore, for an advanced base or expeditionary force. At that time, our officers and men were clamoring for service. Their adventurous spirit could brook no delay. Their thoughts were constantly turned towards France.”[8]
And while the Marines proved themselves more adept at providing organic logistical support for their regiments than the Navy did at Vera Cruz, they did not have the capabilities for self-support that fighting in France as an independent service would; only the Army could support the Marines. Politicians enabled the addition of the Marines to the American Expeditionary Force, but with a catch. Viewing the Marines as interlopers and freeloaders, General Pershing held the Marines in rear areas until his logistics train could support them in the line.
The two regiments of Marines in France, the 5th and the 6th, became part of the 4th Brigade of the Army’s 2ndDivision. Marine leadership fought to keep them complete tactical units, and not just a pool of replacement troops for the Army or the Allies. With training in theater, and busy with tasks in the rear echelons of the Allies’ lines, it took months for the Marines of the 4th Brigade to make it into the front lines.
As much as Commandant Barnett wanted to fulfill the promise of the Marines’ recruiting posters — “First to Fight” — the service remained fully absorbed in its constabulary duties in both Haiti and Santo Domingo and remained dedicated to supporting naval operations in the Caribbean and other theaters. In the wake of the Vera Cruz operation, diplomatic relations with Germany had become increasingly hostile; it became apparent that the Mexican government was aligning itself with the Kaiser. As this threat on the United States’ southern border became apparent, Commandant Barnett and his staff, including Colonel John Lejeune and Captain Earl Ellis, examined plans for a repeat invasion of Mexico.[9]And while the Army Coast Artillery was responsible for the defense of the Panama Canal, the Navy, and by extension, the Marine Corps, were still responsible for maintaining U.S. naval dominance in the Caribbean, as well as the conduct of operations in European waters. As the U.S. would be operating from the ports of allied countries in Europe, the seizure of an advanced base there was not anticipated in the early going.
The motivation for Commandant Barnett to have Marines in the European fight was great enough that he lobbied to have the president order Marines be attached to the Army.[10] When he pledged a regiment of Marines to the American Expeditionary Force, it became clear that all his already-formed and trained units, such as the “mobile” regiment of the Advanced Base Brigade, were otherwise engaged in putting down rebellion in Haiti and Santo Domingo. To provide this expeditionary regiment, which would be designated the 5th Regiment, later 5th Marines, Barnett assembled complete companies from many points — Pensacola, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Guantanamo, and Norfolk — to build the regiment. President Wilson’s orders for Corps’ expansion provided the balance of the first Marines available joining the Army bound for France.[11]
On top of the existing missions to Haiti, and Santo Domingo — where 4 Marines were killed and 15 wounded in 1916 — a battalion of three companies returned to Cuba to “protect American property from the depredation of the rebel bands”[12] In March of 1917 the United States purchased St. Croix and St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies from Denmark for $25,000,000. The move was to preempt any German designs on the islands and contribute to the defense of the Panama Canal. Marines occupied the new U.S. Territory of the Virgin Islands.
However, proof of the continuing commitment to the advanced base force mission showed itself when companies of the advanced base outfit who returned from duty in Haiti and Santo Domingo. Their transfer allowed for a resumption of training, but the 5-inch naval guns which were the keystone of the advanced base mission had been taken by the Navy, who remounted them upon the decks of merchant steamers acquired for wartime service. In their stead, the Marines were promised 8-inch field howitzers, and more modern deck guns, when available. Despite the huge commitment to getting Marines into the fighting in France, the advanced base mission remained viable through 1917.
When Congress declared war, Commandant Barnett redoubled the search for a suitable base for training and maneuver. His search committee narrowed candidates for the base to northern Virginia and then to the small town of Quantico, Virginia. Upon selection, the U.S. Government leased 5,300 acres on the Potomac River from the Quantico Company, a firm that built wooden ships. The Marines of the 9th Company of the Artillery Battalion left Annapolis and took up residence at the Marine Corps Camp of Instruction in early May. Quantico Barnett composed the 5th Regiment for war service from Advanced Base Brigade Marines returned from Haiti and Santo Domingo. Quantico became the final training campus for Marines bound for France seemingly overnight. Given all the commitments of his service, Commandant Barnett requested an increase in the size of the Corps from 30,000, to 75,000. He did so because he maintained that the advanced base mission remained the Marines raison d’être, despite the fighting in France.[13] He promised the General Board, and Secretary Daniels, that he would continue to man and improve the Advanced Base Brigade.
“I said this because the only reason for the existence of the Marine Corps is naval, and I did not intend to have the Navy ever call for extra Marines and be unable to supply them, no matter how I would have hated not having them serve with the Army at that time.”[14]
Perhaps Barnett’s greatest challenge as commandant was his relationship with Secretary Daniels. Daniels was a reformist Democrat, who immediately clashed with the conservative minds in the Navy Department, Marines included. One of his first reforms was in limiting time staff officers could serve in choice billets. He enacted a 4-year time limit on the occupancy of the commandancy, requiring reappointment for a longer period. To put this policy in place, he asked for signed, undated, letter of resignation from Barnett. Barnett, who thought he understood the ins and outs of Washington politics and bureaucracy, refused. Daniels seemingly let the refusal pass.
Barnett’s quest for a third star, as well as the enmity of Smedley Butler, and Butler’s father, Thomas — a leading light on the House Subcommittee for Naval Affairs — and unrelated charges of preferential treatment for relatives in the officer ranks, created a miasma of ill will towards Barnett. As the Democratic Secretary Daniels aligned himself with the influential Republican Butler senior, Butler junior pushed for his own advancement, and the advancement of John Lejeune to the commandancy. Woodrow Wilson’s illness removed him from the service politics machinations. Daniels and Butler got their way with Barnett’s ouster. Barnett appealed to the President, but in the end Lejeune assumed the commandancy.
The Marines’ service in the Great War earned it more fame and notoriety than any prior action and it remains a cornerstone of its institutional history. Fighting alongside the Army’s 2nd and 3rd Divisions in northeastern France, the Marines contribution was largely due to Commandant Barnett’s persistent lobbying; when the Marines made their way to France in the summer and fall of 1917, they were initially tasked with rear-area support functions. Despite many popular explanations, this was not an affront to the Marines. The Army hadn’t developed the infrastructure to support a tenant organization such as the Marines. While the Marines in the ranks served provost marshal and stevedore duty, many officers were poached by the Army for staff billets. The Army was expanding at a rate even greater than the Marines were and lacked in the numbers of experienced field grade officers for staff duty. Many of the Marines majors and lieutenant colonels had twenty or more years of service and became a useful resource to General Pershing and his divisions.[15]
With time, over 30,000 Marines would serve in France in the American Expeditionary Force, 15,000 would serve in support or replacement units; nearly 12,000 Marines were killed or wounded by the end of hostilities. But the Corps served in other expeditionary efforts at the same time. The expeditions in Haiti and Santo Domingo cemented the Marines’ role in constabulary operations in the Caribbean; Pete Ellis refered to these as “Expeditions in ‘Near’ Wars”. The service became responsible for defending American interests on the entire island of Hispaniola. And the Marines returned to areas of Cuba beyond Guantanamo Bay, they provided a presence to dissuade groups sympathetic to the Central Powers from creating trouble in Cuba.
The Advanced Base Force continued training Marines. The unit remained dedicated to the vocation of landing operations in support of fleet activities. At home in Philadelphia, units of the fixed regiment developed embarkation processes to ensure landing them in an efficient manner. At the new base at Quantico, artillerists and infantry practiced landings and maneuvers on the shores of the Potomac and conducted exercises in the wooded hills. Despite large expeditionary commitments in Haiti and Santo Domingo, the service remained dedicated to a naval alignment and remained key to fleet planning and operations.
Navy leaders recognized that the Marine Corps was becoming more than the simple force that guarded Navy bases in the U.S. and the Philippines, or secured advanced bases, or joined landing parties from the ships of the fleet. A decade earlier they had experimented with having a Marine battalion afloat, composed of men from the Brooklyn and Philadelphia Navy Yards, led by Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin R. Russell. Russell’s battalion helped stabilize the Columbian province of Panama for a period, until they were debilitated by tropical diseases.[16] At that time the Columbian province was of potential national importance to the United States, just after negotiating the rights to build a canal across the isthmus. The mission of the at sea battalion was of greater import than fleet operations. In October of 1917, the 8th Regiment was formed at Quantico from recruits who’d just completed training and dispatched to Galveston to guard the oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. The 9th Regiment was formed a month later and sent to Guantanamo as a forward-based reaction force, ready for whatever Germany might try to do in the Caribbean. While these expeditions remained under Navy control, they were precursors to present day Marine units deployed in anticipation of undefined threats; these missions were not reacting to a single case of civil unrest in a neighboring country, nor protecting defined American commercial interests.
In London, the head of Navy forces in Europe, Rear Admiral William Sims, USN, was crafting plans for a major landing operation on the Adriatic Sea. His target was the Austro-Hungarian submarine base at Cattaro. Sims had been the umpire of the Advanced Base Brigade fleet exercises at Culebra in January of 1914, where he’d written a glowing review of the Marines and their capabilities. Sims envisioned a large-scale raid on the submarine base, to destroy facilities, and disrupt the enemy’s ability to conduct submarine replenishment. Lieutenant Colonel Hal Dunlap, USMC, advised Sims on the capabilities of the Marines who might make these landings, falling back on his experience with the Advanced Base Force, and at the Vera Cruz landing, where he commanded the artillery battalion ashore. The Marines Dunlap planned on using in the Adriatic were BGen Eli K. Cole’s 5th Brigade, and the entire Advanced Base Brigade, both undergoing training at Quantico. But Sims’ plan was never realized. The failure of the Allied landings at Gallipoli in 1915, and the resultant political fallout, dissuaded Allied leadership from committing 20,000 Marines in a major raid on the German submarine pens.[17] Germany’s March offensive pushed the operation off until June, when it was canceled altogether.[18]
As Quantico was preparing Marines for France, and advanced base missions, it emerged as a center of learning. Prior to the war, the Marine Corps had modest experience with formal training of their officers and men. During the 1890s they periodically convened a “School of Application” where junior officers and enlisted men would receive a more comprehensive course of study in weapons, tactics, and drill. Since the war with Spain the service had conducted recruit training classes at various naval stations on either coast. By 1918, initial officer training had finally settled at League Island, and recruit training at the Port Royal and Mare Island Navy Stations; the Advanced Base School had been opened at New London in 1910, and moved to League Island the following year. But the wasn’t completely welcome conducting training aboard Navy Yards. When the Marine Corps attempted training unassigned men for sea duty in the 1890s, the Navy hierarchy shut them down. The service was welcome to guard the yards, but not to operate free of Navy direction there.
Quantico was novel because it became a location where the Marines could hone the skills of specialists, using Marine Corps training syllabi, free of Navy interference. The concentration of trainers, teachers, and leaders at Quantico provided the service with an environment where policy and procedures could be easily shared as they were developed. Classroom spaces were created; Marines built training ranges and dug a comprehensive series of trenches based on those on the front lines in France. The new base afforded the Marines space and facilities to accomplish what they couldn’t at the limited space of Navy yards in the cities of Portsmouth, Boston, Brooklyn, DC, or Norfolk; at Quantico they had thousands of acres on which to conduct progressively more challenging training evolutions providing trainees experiences as close to the real thing as possible. Quantico had its own ranges for pistol, rifle, and artillery, and a river where boat handling and landings could be practiced. Quantico created an haven for Marines to develop as an organization, on their own, out from under the Navy, and out of reach of the Army. Quantico provided a training ground, an embarkation point for expeditionary work, and became an incubator for doctrinal development. Training had always been a cornerstone of advanced base work, the facilities at Quantico removed a physical hurdle to maintaining that unit.
PEACE
November 1918 brought the end of hostilities in France; the 4th Regiment of Marines, and the recently arrived 5th, joined in the occupation of Germany. This duty continued until the summer of 1919. Elsewhere, Marines remained involved in expeditionary work in Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo — as they had the previous year — in the defense of “American interests”. The Marines of the advanced base outfit in Philadelphia, and their artillery component at Quantico, continued practicing their vocation, training to support the fleet. At the same time, headquarters began demobilization; the service had been authorized 78,500 officers and men but only 74,788 men and women were in uniform at the armistice. Of those, 32,000 had served in France; where nearly 12,000 had been killed or wounded. Quantico and the Marine barracks at Norfolk began the reverse of induction, giving priority in separation to Marines who had served on tropic stations and were nearing the end of their enlistments, and the Marines who’d served with the 4th and 5th Brigades in France. Congress dropped the authorized strength of the service to 27,400 men, and recruiting was largely suspended.
The service had begun to employ aviation assets in its expeditionary missions, building on experience gained on the 1914 Culebra exercises, the Navy’s work at Vera Cruz in the summer of 1914. During the war Marines gained experience supporting the fighting in northern France, and as part of an expedition to the Azores, where they flew anti-submarine duty in support of the Allied fleet. In Haiti and Santo Domingo, Aviation detachments taught themselves what would become the basics of the Marine Corps air-ground coordination, with flyers experimenting in close-air support, reconnaissance, aerial mapping, liaison, and communications.
Lieutenant Colonel Hal Dunlap returned from Germany for duty at headquarters. While there, he recorded his thoughts on the use of artillery during the war, the refusal of the Army to allow the 10th Marines to serve as an artillery unit in France, and lessons learned that would be useful for the Advanced Base Force following the war. He returned to many of the thoughts he expressed in his lectures at the Naval War College in 1912 regarding artillery’s role in landing operations. He fine-tuned his thoughts and explained how the ‘fixed’ and ‘mobile’ regiments of the brigade would best employ naval guns and field artillery.[19]
Between the Culebra exercises of 1914, and the end of the great war, it became apparent to some that securing advanced bases would remain at the core of the Marines’ portfolio. As in 1900, when the General Board tasked the Marines in the mission, it was clear that neither the Navy, nor the Army would be able to dedicate themselves to such a specialized mission. However, it was also apparent that securing bases was but one of many missions the mobile, sea-borne service would be required to perform. As the 4th and 5th Brigades returned to the United State, their operational and administrative control transferred from the Army to the Navy, at the President’s direction. Marine leadership recognized that dedication to a maritime mission would set them aside from an Army experiencing even larger draw-downs. The survival of the Marine Corps depended on its alignment with the Navy, not emulating the Army.
In 1920, expeditionary work, primarily constabulary in nature, continued apace to the year prior. Maintaining the peace in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo and supporting the Navy and State Department with detachments in the new territory of the Virgin Islands, the Philippines, China, Guam, and Hawai’i continued as their expeditionary obligation. The Marine Corps stabilized its manning — recruiting new men to replace those who only enlisted for the duration of the war — with the goal of meeting their Congress authorized level. Less than two years after the end of the European war, the Marines were returning to a peacetime footing, but had become a fundamentally different organization. Now led by a familiar, and genuinely popular Marine, Major General John Lejeune, the center of their universe was located on the shores of the Potomac River.
When Colonel Lejeune returned from France, Commandant Barnett assigned him the command of Quantico. The leadership displayed, and experiences gained in leading the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division lent him increased credibility in both wings of the Marine officer caste. He had the backing of the more conservative constabulary-centric officers of the Corps, such as Littleton Waller’s protégé, Smedley Butler, and Butler’s father, the influential Congressman Thomas Butler of the House Naval Affairs Committee. Lejeune remained a leading figure among the more naval-minded officers of the Corps; as a graduate of the Naval Academy Class of 1888, he’d excelled at working with the Navy through his career. His experience commanding the Army’s 2nd Division during the Great War, and affinity for the Army schools and staff systems brought a perspective on some of the more sophisticated aspects of command to the Marines. Command at Quantico put him in a position where he could more ably develop the professionalism of the Marine Corps, with which to defend the Marine Corps from interservice attacks.
When he was designated Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps in June of 1920, Lejeune commanded what none of his predecessors had. He assumed control of an organization geared towards training and endowed with facilities dedicated to the Marines’ exclusive use. The military reservation at Quantico allowed infantry, artillery, and the advanced base outfit the physical room to maneuver; its classrooms and dedicated training staff provided the Corps with an intellectual space to develop expanded landing doctrine. With two decades experience providing the fleet a defense from seaborne attack, Lejeune’s leadership and imagination encouraged his officers to develop the capability to take the offense in landing operations. Making the educated leap from conducting defensive landing operations — defending the littorals — to planning offensive landing operations — the projection of power ashore — could not occur organically. The shift in capabilities would require vision, and leadership.
Lejeune remained at Quantico after assuming the commandancy, with Smedley Butler commanding the base. The pair set to overhauling operations and training aboard the post, as well as detailing Marines to construct base and training facilities required by the 5th Marines, 6th Marines, and the Advanced Base Brigade. Of greater significance to the development of landing doctrine, and eventually amphibious doctrine, was Lejeune’s focus on training and development of Marines. In testimony before Congress in January, Lejeune laid out his vision for training Marine officers on par with the training their peers received in the Navy and the Army. He consolidated training at what was called the Marine Schools at Quantico, where he mandated professional training appropriate to rank; second lieutenants at the Basic School, a company grade officers’ school, and a field grade officers’ school were essential to training officers and men in the more sophisticated aspects of their vocations, and prepared them for the creation of new doctrine surrounding landing operations. Lejeune required officers to enroll in courses at the Marine Schools, the Navy War College, the Army’s War College, and the other services’ technical schools. Closer to home, Quantico revealed itself a godsend to the tactical training demands of the Marine Corps. Quantico would eventually become known as the crossroads of the Marine Corps; the proximity of officers in schools, the Marine Corps Association, the advanced base Marines, and those going on expeditions, would prove fertile ground for developing policies and procedures to support emerging missions.
Early in his tenure, Lejeune established the Planning Section, “for the preparation and compilation of all plans, data, etc., connected with the operations of the Marine Corps, and is under the direct supervision of the assistant to the commandant.”[20] Previous commandants had suffered from a chaos created by a few select, over-privileged, staff officers had wreaked at headquarters; Lejeune sought to correct the situation by reorganizing the staff to serve the Corps, and not the other way around. Part of the Planning Sections mandate was taken up by the Division of Operations and Training, which, as its name suggested, was responsible for operations, intelligence, and military education. This move brought some of the responsibility for the development of mission and doctrine into the hands of Lejeune and his senior officers. Lieutenant Colonel Hal Dunlap was put in charge of the DOT, and Lieutenant Colonel Earl “Pete” Ellis was seconded to the planning staff at the Naval War College. Dunlap became an early advocate for the Marines developing the competencies and capabilities to conduct not just defensive landing operations in support of the Navy, but those of an offensive nature too. Emerging conventional wisdom being that if the Marins understood how to defend a beach, they should be able to take one.[21]
While Lejeune’s ascendency heralded an optimistic outlook for the service, the Marine Corps, and the Advanced Base Brigade were gutted by post-war contraction and turnover. Only a skeleton cadre of the brigade remained, as all hands made the move to Quantico.
When Lejeune was selected as commandant, he wasn’t immediately confirmed by the Senate; his succession of Commandant Barnett was so ugly, Congress wanted to see how Warren Harding’s incoming administration felt about Lejeune. On March 4, 1921, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby approached Lejeune at Harding’s inauguration and asked him to be commandant.[22] Lejeune accepted.
With the difficulties created by service drawdowns competing with an ongoing commitment to support naval operations, Major General Lejeune issued Marine Corps Order No.7 (Series 1921). In the order he ended the use of unit designations “First Advanced Base Force” and “Second Advanced Base Force” electing instead to refer to the unit assigned to support the fleet under an umbrella term, “The Advanced Base Force, U.S. Marine Corps”. In doing so, he removed the strictures of a table of organization. Specialist companies would be referred to by a unit number — ie. 81stCompany — and not as part of a “fixed regiment”. This change allowed for task organization — shipping out on expeditions with the assets and personnel essential — and left staffing decisions up to the Marine Corps, not some table of organization published with the Navy.
“The Advanced Base Force, or any part thereof, shall comprise such infantry, artillery, and specialist troops as may be assigned to it by Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, and shall receive instruction in the following branches and such other kindred subjects as may be designated by Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, to enable it to operate efficiently on any duty which may be assigned:
- Artillery: Field guns, naval guns, howitzers, mortars, antiaircraft armament.
- Fire control.
- Machine guns, ground and antiaircraft.
- Submarine mines.
- Searchlights: Harbor defense, antiaircraft, and field.
- Signals: Radio, telephone and telegraph, visual, radio director, microphone sound detector.
- Engineering.
- Infantry and attached weapons, grenades, 37 mm., Stokes mortar, etc.
- Air forces: Land and water planes, observation balloons.”[23]
The mission of embarked Marine units was becoming greater than just that of an advanced base unit. As was seen in the Vera Cruz occupation Marines of the ABF would set aside the special mission, and shoulder arms as an infantry brigade as the circumstances and fleet commander called for. In his annual report, the commandant reported that he has reorganized the Advance Base Force for the Atlantic coast, and that the 4th Brigade, composed of the 5th and 6th Marines, and the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, was garrisoned and ready for deployment at the Quantico base.
To keep the Marines in the limelight after their return from France, and to demonstrate the logistics, command and control, and tactical capabilities of the Advanced Base Force, Brigadier General Smedley Butler led the Quantico Marines on a march from their home to the Wilderness Battlefield. They simulated a landing from the Potomac River to start the exercise, and ironed out how a brigade staff would operate in the field on an expedition. As the service was operating on an austerity budget, the Wilderness operation offered the best training value Lejeune and Butler could muster, while generating incredible amounts of “free” publicity for the Corps.
In the September 1921 issue of Marine Corps Gazette, Colonel Robert H. Dunlap, USMC, penned an article directing Marines to look to the Gallipoli Campaign for direction on planning and organizing landing operations. He urged the Marines to study Gallipoli, and to ready themselves for the conduct of offensive landing operations in support of naval operations. He focused on lessons learned by the British regarding landing craft, naval gunfire, terrain, coordination between the Navy and the landing force, logistics and evacuation of the wounded, as places the Marine Corps could build on lessons learned by the British on the Dardanelles.
And peace brought a shift in the balance of power in the Pacific. During the war, Japan had aligned itself with Great Britain. This arrangement allowed Japan to seize various German colonies in the Pacific. As Germany was assessed reparations by the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations assumed governance of disputed regions. Australia took control of New Guinea, and Japan assumed control of the Mandate Islands, consisting of Palau, Micronesia, the Marshalls, and the northern Marianas. As Navy war planners still regarded Japan as a competitor in the western Pacific and Asia, the Japanese acquisition of the Mandates was problematic. Should hostilities break out between Japan and the U.S., the islands were located right in the path of any relief of Guam and the Philippines. Exacerbating the planners’ angst, the Japanese government closed the islands to any outside inspection, which made verification that no fortifications were being constructed difficult.
PLAN ORANGE remained the U.S. Navy’s planned response to war in the Pacific. It required a the fleet to fight a path across the Pacific; along the way, advanced bases would need be seized and constructed, which called for Marines. Commandant Lejeune recalled Pete Ellis from the Naval War College and put him to work studying the role the Corps would have in a war with Japan. Ellis’ work product drew on his knowledge of Navy war planners work on PLAN ORANGE, his staff experience in France — which Lejeune held to be without peer — and his own experience in the Philippines and with the Asiatic Squadron. Ellis’ ‘Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia’ (1921), also known as ‘Operations Plan 712’ became the shining example of his prescience on war in the Pacific. In it he laid out force requirements and the conduct of the offensive across the Pacific by Navy and Marine units. As Ellis submitted his report to Lejeune, the two made an arrangement where Ellis would remove himself from active service, and travel to the Central Pacific to survey Japanese defenses. His mission was to determine the level of fortification built in the Mandates, and, as the Japanese had shut down most travel to the islands, which were probably in violation of various aspects of the Washington Naval Treaty, Ellis’ mission was not a random lark.[24] His personal challenges, and tragic, untimely, and mysterious death don’t take away from how Lejeune regarded him as an intelligence and staff officer.
There was no doubt in 1922 that the Advanced Base Force remained relevant to fleet operations, but it became apparent in a memo from Lejeune to the General Board that the Marine Corps was considering a broader portfolio of missions that could be accomplished in support of naval operations:
“The primary war mission of the Marine Corps is to supply a mobile force to accompany the Fleet for operations on shore in support of the Fleet: This force should be of such size, organization, armament and equipment as may be required by the plan of naval operations. Also it should be further utilized in conjunction with Army operations on shore, where the active naval operations reach such a stage as to permit its temporary detachment from the Navy.”
Lejeune’s initiative didn’t mean that the advanced base mission would not be available to the Navy, but that it would be just one of the capabilities of the Marine Corps Expeditionary Forces, as Marines accompanying the fleet would then be known. At Quantico, he reorganized the tenant units again, and had his staff develop plans in association with Army intelligence, and the ONI on potential future wars.
Expeditions and foreign assignments continued, with the maintenance of the legation guard in Nicaragua, the movement of Marines in Santo Domingo from rural posts to larger towns, and deployments — 3rd Battalion 5th Marines aboard USS PENNSYLVANIA to sit off the Panamanian coast, and a detachment to Tientsin, China — keeping in line with “service beyond the seas”. Brigadier General John H. Russell became the High Commissioner of Haiti during at the end of 1921. Navy requirements for the service were shifting as coal began to be replaced by fuel oil for ships. The once disputed base at Olongopo closed, and the Navy moved the Marines and other assets to the Cavite Naval Station. The floating drydock at Olongopo, USS GEORGE DEWEY, remained until further plans were developed.
Despite the restrictions of austerity budgets and a new tempo of operations brought on with peacetime, Lejeune worked his outfits in developing landing capabilities. A battalion of Marines worked with the Atlantic Fleet at Culebra, practicing embarkation, debarkation, landings, and transport of advanced base equipment and ordnance. Brigadier General Butler marched the advanced base force Marines from Quantico for maneuvers at Gettysburg Battlefield, much like at the Wilderness Battlefield exercises the previous summer. The general public was much more interested in the Marines reenacting major battles and rubbing shoulders with Civil War veterans at these exercises than in the practice officers and NCOs were getting in communications, aerial reconnaissance, staff organization, and expeditionary logistics, but the exercises developed skills that would be critical two decades later.
By 1923, Major General Lejeune’s annual report made no mention of the Advanced Base Force. The mission had effectively been subsumed into the portfolio of the Marine Corps Expeditionary Forces East Coast. In 1924, the report did mention use of the advanced base force in one of the fleet exercises, but of greater note, Marines had begun to focus on more offense-oriented missions. In January of 1924, the 5th Marines boarded USS HENDERSON, and transited to Panama, where they conducted a “successful landing attack at Fort Randolph and Coco Solo, capturing these places and making possible the destruction of the locks, which would make the passage of the canal impossible.” An operation of this level of sophistication was fundamentally different than the landing Huntington’s Battalion made at Guantanamo in 1898. Lejeune reported that the balance of the regiment landed at Culebra and established an advanced base, and during “fleet problem No. 4, the Fifth Regiment made a landing attack on Culebra Island which was defended by the remainder of the expeditionary force.”
Multiple operations, multiple locations, multiple landings. Twenty years of evolution in landing operations left their mark on the Marines. An evolution forged, and quenched, and honed over the next two decades, preparing the service for challenges greater than anything than Huntington’s Marines could ever have conceived.
[1] Citibank, or Citicorp (C)
[2] John Lejeune. Reminiscences. Kindle edition.
[3] Commandant’s Report. 1915.
[4] Secretary of the Navy Report. 1916.
[5] June and March 1916, respectively.
[6] Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Soldiers of the Sea, The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962. The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, Baltimore. 1991 (1962).
[7] Peter T. Underwood. “General Pershing and the U.S. Marines”. https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCH/Marine-Corps-History-Winter-2019/General-Pershing-and-the-US-Marines/
[8] John Lejeune. Reminiscences.
[9] Lejeune. Reminisces.
[10] Edwin H. Simmons and Joseph H. Alexander. Through the Wheat – The U.S. Marines in World War I. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2008.
[11] James Yingling. A Brief History of the 5th Marines. Historical Branch, Quantico. 1963.
[12] Commandant’s Report, 1917.
[13] “Approximately 30,000 marines were in France at the end of the war out of the 72,963 leathernecks on active duty.” Merrill L. Bartlett. “George Barnett” in Commandants of the Marine Corps. Allan R. Millet and Jack Shulimson, ed. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2004.
[14] George Barnett. George Barnett, Marine Corps Commandant: A Memoir.
[15] Peter T. Underwood. “General Pershing and the U.S. Marines” https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCH/Marine-Corps-History-Winter-2019/General-Pershing-and-the-US-Marines/
[16] Douglas E. Nash, Sr. “The ‘Afloat-Ready Battalion’ The Development of the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit, 1898-1978. Online.
[17] Leo J. Daugherty III. Pioneers of Amphibious Warfare, 1898-1945. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Jefferson. 2009. Kindle edition.
[18] Daugherty. Pioneers.
[19] Angus Murray. On Contested Shores. “The U.S. Marine Corps and Gallipoli.” Timoth Heck and B.A. Friedman, ed. Marine Corps University Press, Quantico. 2020. Kindle edition.
[20] Commandant’s Report 1920.
[21] Merrill L. Bartlett. Lejeune – A Marine’s Life, 1867-1942. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia. 1991.
[22] Dirk Anthony Ballendorf and Merrill L. Bartlett. Pete Ellis – An Amphibious Warfare Prophet, 1880-1923. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 1997.
[23] https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Frequently-Requested-Topics/Historical-Documents-Orders-and-Speeches/Establishing-the-Advanced-Base-Force/
[24] Ballendorf and Bartlett. Pete Ellis.
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